So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb of her, the little fluttering swallow, yet by some strange, persistent aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown, not an edge, not a thread, seemed even to so much as graze his knee, seemed even to so much as shadow his hand, lest it short-circuit thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions. With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon sat staring into the girl’s eyes, the blue eyes too full of childish questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment. “After all, Rae Malgregor,” he smiled at last, faintly--“after all, Rae Malgregor, Heaven knows when I shall ever get another holiday.” “Yes, sir?” said the White Linen Nurse. With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter and began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers. “How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?” he asked abruptly. “Four months--actually with you, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse. “Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my--proposal of marriage to you?” he asked shrewdly. “Oh, yes, sir!” said the White Linen Nurse. “You called it ’general heartwork for a family of two.’” A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon’s own eyes fell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct as hers. “Well,” he smiled, “through the whole four months I seem to have kept my part of the contract all right, and held you merely as a drudge in my home. Have you, then, decided once and for all time, whether you are going to stay on with us or whether you will ‘give notice,’ as other drudges have done?” With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse began to finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half-way round, as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely the profile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior Surgeon’s questioning eyes. “I shall never--give notice, sir!” fluttered the white throat. “Are you perfectly sure?” insisted the Senior Surgeon. The pink in the White Linen Nurse’s profiled cheek deepened a little. “Perfectly sure, sir,” declared the carmine lips. Like the crack of a pistol, the Senior Surgeon snapped the ivory paper-cutter in two. “All right, then,” he said. “Rae Malgregor, look at me! Don’t take your eyes from mine, I say! Rae Malgregor, if I should decide in my own mind, here and now, that it was best for you, as well as for me, that you should come away with me now for this week, not as my guest, as I had planned, but as my wife, even if you were not quite ready for it in your heart, even if you were not yet remotely ready for it, would you come because I told you to come?” Heavily under her white eyelids, heavily under her black lashes, the girl’s eyes struggled up to meet his own. “Yes, sir,” whispered the White Linen Nurse.