ach any importance to it now? Let it rest. Not a soul knew of it
but myself. I had a perfect right to keep or destroy my own notes.
Suppose I destroyed that one at once?

I unlocked the desk, and took out my book again. The leaf on which these
special notes were written was already loose, and might have been easily
lost at any time, I thought. I burned it by the flame of the gas, and
threw the brown ashes into the grate. For a few minutes I felt elated,
as if set free from an oppressive burden; and I returned to the story I
had been reading, and laughed more heartily than before at the grotesque
turn of the incidents. But before long the tormenting question came up
again. The notes were not lost. They seemed now to be burned in upon my
brain.

The power has been put into your hands to save life, said my conscience,
and you are resolving to let it perish. What have you to do with the
fact that the nature is mean, selfish, cruel? It is the physical life
simply that you have to deal with. What is beyond that rests in the
hands of God. What He is about to do with this soul is no question for
you. Your office pledges you to cure him if you can, and the fulfilment
of this duty is required of you. If you let this man die, you are a
murderer.

But, I said in answer to myself, consider what trivial chances the whole
thing has hung upon. Besides the accident that this was my mother's
malady, there was the chance of Lowry not being called from home. The
man was his patient, not mine. After that there was the chance of Jack
going to see him, instead of me; or of him refusing my attendance. If
the chain had broken at one of these links, no responsibility could have
fallen upon me. He would have died, and all the good results of his
death would have followed naturally. Let it rest at that.

But it could not rest at that. I fought a battle with myself all through
the quiet night, motionless and in silence, lest Jack should become
aware that I was not sleeping. How should I ever face him, or grasp his
hearty hand again, with such a secret weight upon my soul? Yet how could
I resolve to save Foster at the cost of dooming Olivia to a life-long
bondage should he discover where she was, or to life-long poverty should
she remain concealed? If I were only sure that she was alive! But if she
were dead--why, then all motive for keeping back this chance of saving
him would be taken away. It was for her sake merely that I hesitated.

For he