broke
out:

"'I won't have her here--the wretch!'

"I begged her to control herself, and remember that her husband was a
dying man.

"'But I'm his wife,' she said, and flew out of the room."

The doctor paused, staring at the fire. He shrugged his shoulders, and
went on: "I'd have stopped her fury if I could! A dying man is not the
same as the live animal, that he must needs be wrangled over! And
suffering's sacred, even to us doctors. I could hear their voices
outside. Heaven knows what they said to each other. And there lay Godwin
with his white face and his black hair--deathly still--fine-looking
fellow he always was! Then I saw that he was coming to! The women had
begun again outside--first, the wife, sharp and scornful; then the
other, hushed and slow. I saw Godwin lift his finger and point it at the
door. I went out, and said to the woman, 'Dr. Godwin wishes to see you;
please control yourself.'

"We went back into the room. The wife followed. But Godwin had lost
consciousness again. They sat down, those two, and hid their faces. I
can see them now, one on each side of the bed, their eyes covered with
their hands, each with her claim on him, all murdered by the other's
presence; each with her torn love. H'm! What they must have suffered,
then! And all the time the child crying--the child of one of them, that
might have been the other's!"

The doctor was silent, and the old Director turned towards him his
white-bearded, ruddy face, with a look as if he were groping in the
dark.

"Just then, I remember," the doctor went on suddenly, "the bells of St.
Jude's close by began to peal out for the finish of a wedding. That
brought Godwin back to life. He just looked from one woman to the other
with a queer, miserable sort of smile, enough to make your heart break.
And they both looked at him. The face of the wife--poor thing!--was as
bitter hard as a cut stone, but she sat there, without ever stirring a
finger. As for the other woman--I couldn't look at her. He beckoned to
me; but I couldn't catch his words, the bells drowned them. A minute
later he was dead.

"Life's a funny thing! You wake in the morning with your foot firm on
the ladder--One touch, and down you go! You snuff out like a candle. And
it's lucky when your flame goes out, if only one woman's flame goes out
too.

"Neither of those women cried. The wife stayed there by the bed. I got
the other one away to her carriage, down the street.--And so sh