"Remember, now your test is beginning, and I expect you not to fail me. A great deal depends on you, Rose. You are a soldier on the firing-line now, and you are going to keep up, whatever happens. It may be for half an hour, but you will keep up, for me, for Lou, whatever happens. Remember! _Whatever happens!_" He looked fixedly into the unnaturally big eyes which were turned up to his like two glorious flowers, and she nodded. With a pang of regret he noticed how thin her face was, and how white,--so pale that the color had fled even from the sweet, sensitive lips which smiled ever so faintly at him, and then at the nurse, as the latter made the quiet suggestion that she try to keep her eyes always fixed on the pad of gauze, and not let them be drawn away from it if she could possibly help it. But at first she could not, and so she saw the pitiful little head, stripped of its golden crown, first covered with a clinging veil of wet cloth, over which, from behind the ears to the top of the forehead, a circular band of rubber tubing was adjusted and drawn tight into the flesh--"to stop the blood, like I did for grandpappy when he cut his arm," she thought. Then the head was gently raised and settled into position on the sand-filled pillow, which cradled it firmly. Only the gurgling breath of the mercifully unconscious baby, and the crackling of the fire, broke the silence as the surgeon adjusted and posed his patient's head, as an artist would his model's. A piercing light flashed before the girl's eyes, and she saw that now Miss Merriman held a strange-looking black tube, which shed a circle of concentrated sunshine on the gauze-covered head. It was her first experience with a flashlight, and she marvelled at its power. Now there came another dart of light, thin and fleeting, and she knew that a knife was poised in mid-air. Involuntarily she closed her eyes tight; a shudder ran through her. Donald's voice spoke impersonally, and steadied her. "I shall expose the third left frontal convolution of the brain through the fronto-parietal bone, and, in making the osteoplastic flap, I intend to leave a wide working margin above the size of the opening which may actually be necessary in order to reach the growth. It has got to be fully exposed at once. I can't afford to delay, under the circumstances." The gleam of the scalpel held her unwilling gaze with the fascination of horror; she drew her breath with a sound between a shudder and a sigh as it descended.... "I _must_ keep my eyes on the ether pad," came the command from her whirling brain.