530
PARTISAN REVIEW
bright as ever. Her love was returned, she knew: he loved her nose
exactly as she loved his knives. She looked at her face in the domed
mirror and saw how the blood had streaked her lily-white cheeks and
had stained her shroud. She returned to the private song: Did you
enjoy your coffee? your coffee?
At the half-hour, a murmur, anguine and slumbrous, came to
her and only when she had repeated the words twice did they en–
grave their meaning upon her. Dr. Nicholas said, "Stand back now,
nurse. I'm at this girl's brain and I don't want my elbow jogged."
Instantly Pansy was alive. Her strapped ankles arched angrily; her
wrists strained against their bracelets. She jerked her head and she
felt the pain flare; she had made the knife slip.
"Be still!" cried the surgeon. "Be quiet, please!"
He had made her remember what it was she had lost when he
had rammed his gauze into her nose : she bustled like a housewife to
shut the door. She thought, I must hurry before the robbers come.
It would be like the time Mother left the cellar door open and the
robber came and took, of all things, the terrarium.
Dr. Nicholas was whispering to her. He said, in the voice of
a lover,
"If
you can stand it five minutes more, I can perform the
second operation now and you won't have to go through this again.
What do you say?"
She did not reply. It took her several seconds to remember why
it was her mother had set such store by the terrarium and then it came
to her that the bishop's widow had brought her .an herb from Palestine
to put in it.
The interne said, "You don't want to have your nose packed
again, do you?"
The surgical nurse said, "She's a good patient, isn't she, sir?"
"Never had a better," replied Dr. Nicholas. "But don't call me
'sir.' You must be a Canadian to call me 'sir.'"
The nurse at the foot of the bed said, "I'll order some more
coffee for you.''
"How about it, Miss Vanneman?" said the doctor. "Shall I go
ahead?"
She debated. Once she had finally fled the hospital and fled
Dr. Nicholas, nothing could compel her to come back. Still, she
knew that the time would come when she could no longer live in
seclusion, she must go into the world again and must be equipped to
live in it; she banally acknowledged that she must be able to breathe.
And finally, though the world to which she would return remained
