Peter's smile met hers half-way in the dusk. "It may be another week before I see you again. In case--I'd like to tell you that I'm staying on indefinitely. The chief has pushed me out of my Sunday section and has sent me a lot of special articles to do up here. He thinks I had better not come back until I'm all fit."
"You're perfectly fit now." There was a brutal frankness in the girl's words.
Peter had grown used to these moments. They no longer troubled or hurt him. He had begun to understand. "Maybe I am; I feel so, but you can never tell. Then there's always the danger of one's heart going back on one. That's why I've decided to stay on and coddle mine. Rather good plan?"
Sheila O'Leary vouchsafed no answer. She disappeared through the entrance of the sanitarium, leaving Peter Brooks still smiling. Neither his expression nor position had changed a few seconds later when Miss Jacobs touched him on the arm.
"Oh, Mr. Brooks! Were you the guilty party--running away with Leerie? For the last two hours we've been combing the San grounds for her." The green eyes of the flirtatious nurse gleamed peculiarly catlike in the dusk. "Of course I don't suppose my opinion counts so very much with you," there was a honeyed, self-deprecatory quality in the girl's tone, "but if I were you, I wouldn't go about so awfully much with Leerie. She's a dear girl--I don't suppose it's really her fault--but she had such a record. And you know it's my creed that girls of that kind can compromise poor men far oftener than men compromise girls. Oh, I do hope you understand what I mean!"
Peter still wore a smile, but it was a different smile. It was as much like the old one as a search-light is like sunshine. He focused it full on Miss Jacobs's face. "I'm a shark at understanding. And don't worry about me. I'm more of a shark in deep water with--with sirens." He chuckled inwardly at the look of blank incomprehension on the nurse's face. "By the way, just what did you want Miss Leary for? Not another accident?"
The girl gave her head a disgusted toss. "Oh, they want her to help an old man die. He came up here a week ago. I saw him then, and he looked ready to burst. Doctor MacByrn said he weighed over three hundred and had a blood pressure of two hundred and ten. They can't bring it down, and his heart is about done for. Leerie always gets those dying cases. Ugh!" The girl shuddered. "Guess they wouldn't put me on any of those sure-dead cases; it's bad enough when you happen on them."