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matter how deep, in his rat-hole of lying guilt.
    “What IS this, Garcia! What are you DOING there!”
    But the gardener stared imperturbably past her to Babs Mintner, lying on the couch, smiling through tears.
    “Well, I have never!” said Nurse Thorne placing herself squarely before him so he could not see beyond.
    “You, Garcia! What does this mean?”
    “It’s for her,” said the gardener, obviously disturbed by the effort of speaking in English. He tried to look past Nurse Thorne by moving his head to the left and right, stepping forward and back, careful at the same time not to endanger the daffodils that grew at his feet.
    “What!”
    “It’s all right,” called Babs Mintner with noticeable effort from her couch, “it’s for me.” She began to get up, cautiously, swinging her white legs off the couch as if they were made of porcelain. “Yes, Garcia?” She came forward unsteadily, one hand to her brow.
    “You want to see him?” put in Nurse Thorne, incredulous. “ Now? You don’t mean you want to see him now !”
    “ Why, how do you mean?” said Babs, seeming really ingenuous.
    “But what on earth for?” the other demanded, freshly irate, actually blocking her way.
    “It’s all right,” repeated Babs, weakly, as if she might faint. “It will only take a minute.”
    “Well for heaven’s sake put on your whites!”
    Eleanor Thorne took the fresh habit from the chair and helped her into it.
    And Babs agreed wearily, romantically, as if the sweat and tears of twelve-hour bombardments had made the young nurse forget for a moment that she was a woman, beautiful and desired.
    So when the top button was done and the girl safely belted, Eleanor Thorne wheeled and left the room in a huff.
    “I’ll be having a word with your superiors soon,” Dr. Eichner was saying to Stockton and Eddy from the back seat of the patrol car en route to the station. “In light of that, perhaps you can realize it might be advantageous to you now to answer the question I put earlier: who reported this accident? ”
    The two sat mute-skulled before him, Stockton drowned sullen and square-shouldered at the wheel, while Eddy, by the window, was propped so straight and stiff-kneed he could have just been handed a crumpet in the Commissioner’s living room.
    The Doctor went on, half patiently, “Since you obviously failed to get the truck . . .”
    “Why don’t you tell the Doctor who reported it?” Stockton broke in to Eddy, who began to move himself then, gradually, to face the Dr. Eichner.
    “Ain’t nobody reported it, Doc,” he said, turning completely around. “We seen the smoke.”
    Nurse Thorne went straight to her office, strictly stepping the distance, her close locked lips like the shutting edge of a knife. Once inside her door she half opened it in closing her eyes and, folding slightly at the shoulders, pressed back against the door as it gradually closed behind her both hands clutching the knob tight to a white-edged rose: but she was not alone. Beth Jackson—at the seaward window, moored as some great used ship, or listless bulk that moved in sighs—swayed at the ocean window, while all around her dark bunned head frayed a vigorous silver. She was the most unkempt woman in the Clinic.
    “Oh, there you are, Beth,” Eleanor Thorne improvised, going to the desk and taking up some papers.
    “It’s about that shipment of crocks,” said Beth, not to be taken in.
    It was almost a month now that a hospital supply salesman, in failing to find Nurse Thorne had called on Beth Jackson:
    A dark-rained Friday afternoon, when one shore-length cloud lay sucked at the sea like a huge gray leech in the western sky, and the whole ocean seemed to be moving slowly, inland. The young man had appeared casually, almost as if he knew that, failing to find Nurse Thorne, there was no reason to stay but in refuge.
    Here, in the outside room at gyno, curtains had been drawn against the day, and lights turned up—these