moment when the pain was keenest. The white, round arm under my hands
was cold, and the muscles were soft and unstrung. I felt the ends of the
broken bone grating together as I drew the fragments into their right
places, and the sensation went through and through me. I had set scores
of broken limbs before with no feeling like this, which was so near
unnerving me. But I kept my hands steady, and my attention fixed upon my
work. I felt like two persons--a surgeon who had a simple, scientific
operation to perform, and a mother who feels in her own person every
pang her child has to suffer.

All the time the girl's white face and firmly-set lips lay under my
gaze, with the wide-open, unflinching eyes looking straight at me: a
mournful, silent, appealing face, which betrayed the pain I made her
suffer ten times more than any cries or shrieks could have done. I
thanked God in my heart when it was over, and I could lay her down
again. I smoothed the coarse pillows for her to lie more comfortably
upon them, and I spread my cambric handkerchief in a double fold between
her cheek and the rough linen--too rough for a soft cheek like hers.

"Lie quite still," I said. "Do not stir, but go to sleep as fast as you
can."

She was not smiling now, and she did not speak; but the gleam in her
eyes was growing wilder, and she looked at me with a wandering
expression. If sleep did not come very soon, there would be mischief. I
drew the curtains across the window to shut out the twilight, and
motioned to the old woman to sit quietly by the side of our patient.

Then I went out to Tardif.