?"

"That is a hard saying," he answered, soberly.

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis
abruptly.

"I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking
straight into his. "Will you do it?"

His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness," he
answered. "Will you do it?"

"That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged.

"This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart befriends
him," he replied, coming closer to her. "At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He
tried to take her hand.

"Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture.
"Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him.
You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick,
and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation alone. It is
too critical and difficult, he says."

"So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his
professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What
interests you in him?"

"To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your
skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or
poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given
to so many, but I can help in my own way."

"You want me to see the man at once?"

"If you will."

"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."

She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
and a woodsman."

"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are made,"
he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes again.

"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded, unable
now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.

Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she had
challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man she
loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken away
from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right of
justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if she
had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in the
mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
defenceless position, she had kept the