rd name. She was
pretty well at one with Paula in the relative valuation she put upon her
father's opinion and that of the throat and lung specialist.

"Oh, as for Steinmetz," John Wollaston said, after a pause, querulously,
"he's a good observer. There's nothing to be said against him as a
laboratory man. But he has the vice of all German scientists; he doesn't
understand imponderables. Never a flash of intuition about him. He
managed to intimidate Darby into agreeing with him. Neither of them takes
my recuperative powers into account."

He seemed to feel that this wasn't a very strong line to take and the
next moment he conceded as much.

"But suppose they were right," he flashed round at her. "Am I not still
entitled to my choice? I've lived the greater part of my life. I've
pulled my weight in the boat. It should be for me to choose whether I
spend the life I have left in two years or in twenty. If they want to
call that suicide, let them. I've no religion that's real enough to make
a valid argument against my right to extinguish myself if I choose."

She wasn't shocked. It was characteristic of their talks together, this
free range among ethical abstractions, especially on his part.

"You act on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of
the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most
another wretched year or two."

"That's a different thing," he said. "Or rather it comes to the same
thing. The question of shortening one's life is one that nobody has a
right to decide except for himself."

Then he asked abruptly. "What sort of person is Maxfield Ware?"

She attempted no palliations here.

"He kissed me last night," she said, "taking his cigar out of his mouth
for the purpose. He's not a sort of person I can endure or manage. Paula
hates him as much as I do, but she can manage him. He'd never try to
kiss her like that."

"Oh, God!" cried John. "It's intolerable." He flung away his stick, got
to his feet and walked to the edge of the bluff. "Think of her working,
traveling,--living almost,--with a man like that! You say she can manage
him; that she can prevent him from trying to make love to her. Well, what
does that mean, if you're right, but that she--understands him; his talk;
his ideas; his point of view. You can't make yourself intelligible to a
man like that; she can. It's defilement to meet his mind anywhere--any
angle of it. She's given him carte blanche, she