ssion as any of the poor creatures whom I tried to cure."

"You never told me of that."

"No, I was afraid to speak of it. It would have made it seem more real.
But I can tell you now, if you are sure you will not be bored."

"I shall not be bored," said Willits quietly.

CHAPTER VII

"In order to make you understand, I'll have to go back," said the doctor
musingly, "a long way back. Some of the story you already know, but now
I want you to know it all. But first--when you found me in that
hospital, a useless bit of human wreckage, and forced me back into life
with your scorn of a coward and your cutting words, what did you think?
What did I tell you? It is all hazy to me."

"You told me very little. It was plain enough. You had come a bad
cropper. Some girl, I gathered. You had lost her, you blamed yourself.
You talked a great deal of nonsense. I inferred--the usual thing!"

"You were mistaken. It was at once better and worse than that. But let's
begin at the beginning. My father was a fairly wealthy man--but a
dreamer. He made his money by a clever invention and lost it by an
investment little short of idiotic. Like many unpractical men he had
rather fancied himself as a man of business and the disillusion killed
him. He--shot himself. My mother, my sister and myself were left, with
nothing save a small sum in the bank and the deed of the modest house we
lived in. Adela was twenty-one and I was nineteen. We sold the house,
moved into rooms; Adela learned shorthand and went into an office. I
wanted to do the same. But mother was adamant. I must finish my college
course and take my degree; she and Adela could manage until I could make
it up to them later. It was hard, but it seemed the only sensible
thing to do--

"I faced the task of working my way through college with a thankful
heart, for though I pretended that I did not care, it would have been a
terrible thing to have given up my life's ambition. The thought of Adela
trudging to the office hurt--it was the touch of the spur. I needn't
tell you, you can guess how I worked! People were kind. One summer, old
Doctor Inglis, whose amiable hobby it was to help young medical
students, engaged me for the holidays as his chauffeur and general
helper at a wage which would see me through my next term. It seemed an
unusual piece of luck, for he lived only twenty miles from my mother's
home and an electric tram connected the towns. One night I went with
Adela