Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/222

 Nest had been conscious of an unfamiliar lump in her throat. For the first time in her professional experience she was not feeling sure of herself. She wondered whether the patient had felt it, and whether these lynx-eyed male colleagues had any suspicion of it. Her strong white hands were as steady and as deft as ever, but she felt her heart sink. Was she to fail now, for the first time, and on this friend of her heart—this friend who had come, it seemed to her, to fill the place of Sister Estelle, dead these eight years? The sufferer would permit no one but her to operate. This life, so dear to her and to others, lay in her hands—and for the first time in her experience she shrank from the responsibility. She felt suddenly cold, and held her hand to the blaze. It shook visibly. Dr. Van Nest sprang to her feet with an exclamation of anger.

"Fool that I am," she said. "I am letting myself go to pieces. I shall be in fine condition for to-morrow's work." Her eyes filled with sudden, rare tears. "She is the only being I love," she breathed, "and I am going to lose her. First, Sister Estelle. And now she must go—and under my hands at that."

Her thoughts flew to the grave in the convent cemetery out West, marked by a simple pine board darkened by the storms of many