From such reflections he would be roused by the anæsthetist’s laconic “Ready.” On one side of the operating table he would stand, and on the other L.M. with the theatre-sister ready at his elbow. The surgeon would pick up a scalpel carelessly, as a man picks up a pencil to write, and then, apparently with as little thought, he would make a long, clean incision through the skin and superficial fatty tissues of the abdomen, putting his head on one side to look at it like an artist whose pencil has described a beautiful curve. Then, sharply: “Swabs . . . Ingleby, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” And Edwin would press a swab of gauze to the incision to absorb the blood that escaped from the subcutaneous veins. “Right.” Layer by layer the various planes of fascia, muscle, and peritoneum would be opened and neatly laid aside, every one of them slipped in its own pair of artery forceps. Then, from the gaping wound, that L.M. probed with his thin finger, a sickening odour would rise . . . one that Edwin never remembered apart from the other sickening smell of ether. “Pus. . . I thought so,” L.M. would say. “The brute’s perforated, damn him.” And Edwin knew that yet another creature had been snatched out of the jaws of death. In the hands of L.M. surgery seemed so simple. His scalpel—for he used fewer instruments than any surgeon Edwin ever knew—was a part of him in the same way as a perfect rider is part of his horse. There was never any hesitation in his surgery, never any room for doubt; everything was straightforward and self-evident from the first incision to the last suture; and he was at his best when he threw into it a touch of bravura, rejoicing in the amazing virtuosity of his own technique and playing, a little, to the gallery. “There you are,” he would say, “you see there’s nothing in it. Nothing at all but a working knowledge of anatomy and a dollop of common-sense. That’s all surgery. Why on earth should they pay me a hundred guineas for doing a simple thing like that? There’s nothing in it, is there?” Edwin knew that there was a great deal in it: genius, and more than genius: a life of devotion to one end only; infinite physical strains; cruel disappointments; harrowing mistakes. For even L.M. had made mistakes in his time; and a doctor pays for his mistakes more heavily than any other man.