ad been attacked in the
"Therapeutic Quarterly" upon my famous theory of Antisepsis. Perhaps I
may add the circumstance that my baby was teething.

This was, naturally, less important to me than to his mother, who
thought the child was ill. I knew better, and it annoyed me that my
knowledge did not remove her apprehension. In point of fact, he had
cried at night for a week or two, more than he ought to have done. She
could not understand why I denied him a Dover's powder. I needed
sleep, and could not get it. We were both worn, and--I might fill my
chapter to the brim with the little reasons for my great error. Let it
suffice that they were small and that it was large.

We had been married three years, and our boy was a year old. He was a
fine fellow. Helen lost her Greek look and took on the Madonna
expression after he was born. Any woman who is fit to be a mother
gains that expression with her first child. My wife was a very happy
mother.

She was sitting in the library when I came in that evening. It was a
warm, red library, with heavy curtains and an open fire--a deep room
that absorbed colour. I fancied the room, and it was my wife's
pleasure to await me in it with the child each evening at the earliest
hour when I might by any chance be expected home. She possessed to the
full the terrible power of waiting which women have. She could do
nothing when she expected me. Although three years married, she could
not read, or write, or play when she was listening for my step. I do
not mean that she told me this. I found it out. She never called my
attention to such little feminine weaknesses. She was never over-fond.
My wife had a noble reserve. I had never seen the hour when I felt
that her tenderness was a treasure to be lightly had, or indifferently
treated.

It should be said that the library opened from the parlours, and was at
that time separated from them by a heavy portiere of crimson stuff, the
doors not being drawn. This drapery she was in the habit of folding
apart at the hours of my probable return, and as I came through the
long parlours my eyes had the first greeting of her, before my voice or
arms. Upon this evening, as upon others, I entered by the parlour
door, and came--more quickly than usual--toward the library. I was in
a great hurry; one of the acute attacks of the chronic condition which
besets the busy doctor. As I crossed the length of the thick carpet,
the rooms shoo