She gave a non-committal shrug and passed into the room. He was watching for her coming, and a ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. She couldn't remember having seen even so much of a smile before. "It's--it's Leerie." He said it just as he had the night before. But there was a strange, wistful appeal in the voice which set Sheila wondering afresh. "Gorgeous night, full of stars, and air like wine. Smell the verbena and thyme from the San gardens?" Sheila threw back her head and sniffed the air like a wild thing. "Took me a month to trail that smell--be sure of it. You only get it at night after a light rain. Take some long breaths of it and you'll be asleep before lights are out." But he was not. He lay rigid as the night before, his eyes staring straight before him. Sheila remembered a description she had read once of a mountain guide who had been caught on the edge of a landslide and hung for hours over the abyss, clutching a half-felled tree and trying to keep awake until help came. The man she was nursing might almost be living through such an agony of mind and body, afraid to yield up his consciousness lest he should go plunging off into some horrible abyss. What did he fear? Was it sleep? Was somnophobia what lay behind the wrecking of this fine, clean manhood? The thing seemed incredible, and yet--and yet-- Before dawn crept again into the Surgical, the mind of Sheila O'Leary was made up. Peter was suddenly aware that the nurse was close at his bedside, chafing the clenched fingers free. It was that mysterious hour that hangs between the going night and coming day, the most non-resisting time for body and mind, when the human will gives up the struggle if it gives it up at all. And Sheila O'Leary, being well aware of this, rubbed the tense nerves into a comfortable state of relaxation and talked. First she talked of the city, and found he was not city-born. Then she talked of the country--of South, East, and West--and located his birthplace in a small New England village. She talked of the outdoor freedom of a country boy, of the wholesome work and fun on a farm with a large family and good old-fashioned parents, and she found that he had been an only child, motherless, with a family consisting of a misanthropic, grief-stricken father and a hired girl. His voice sounded toneless and more tired than ever as he spoke of his childhood. "Lonely?" queried Sheila. "Perhaps." "Neglected and--frightened?" "What do you mean?" The girl leaned over the bed and looked straight into the eyes that seemed to be daring her to find the way into his darkness and at the same time barring fast the door against her coming. She smiled gently. "Tell me--can you remember when you first began to fear sleep?"