, he always does any
of my sudden ebullitions of feeling. He knows my weakness.

"If I thought there were danger," he mildly said, "I would be as
much troubled as you are."

"As to danger, that is imminent enough," I returned, fretfully.

"On the contrary, I am satisfied that there is none. One of your
symptoms makes this perfectly clear."

"Indeed! What symptom?" I eagerly asked.

"Your terrible fears of a cancer are an almost certain sign that you
will never have one. The evil we most fear, rarely, if ever, falls
upon us."

"That is a very strange way to talk," I replied.

"But a true way, nevertheless," said my husband.

"I can see no reason in it. Why should we be troubled to death about
a thing that is never going to happen?"

"The trouble is bad enough, without the reality, I suppose. We are
all doomed to have a certain amount of anxiety and trouble here,
whether real or imaginary. Some have the reality, and others the
imagination. Either is bad enough; I don't know which is worse."

"I shall certainly be content to have the imaginary part," I
replied.

"That part you certainly have, and your full share of it. I believe
you have, at some period or other, suffered every ill that flesh is
heir to. As for me, I would rather have a good hearty fit of
sickness, a broken leg or arm, or even a cancer, and be done with
it, than become a living Pandora's box, even in imagination."

"As you think I am?"

"As I know you are."

"Then you would really like to see me have a cancer in my breast,
and be done with it?" I said this pretty sharply.

"Don't look so fiercely at me," returned my husband, smiling. "I
didn't say I would rather you would have a cancer; I said I would
rather have one, and be done with it, than suffer as you do from the
fear of it, and a hundred other evils."

"I must say you are quite complimentary to your wife," I returned,
in a little better humour than I had yet spoken. The fact was, my
mind took hold of what my husband said about real and imaginary
evils, and was somewhat braced up. Of imaginary evils I had
certainly had enough to entitle me to a whole lifetime exemption
from real ones.

From the time Mrs. A--left me until my husband came in, the pain
in my breast had steadily increased, accompanied by a burning and
stinging sensation. In imagination, I could clearly feel the entire
cancerous nucleus, and perceive the roots eating their way in all
directions around it. This feel