er rights, her longings which are abnormally acute because of her
over-fine nervous system? Those longings, situated as she is, can never
be satisfied in any way except for her own harm. Meantime she eats her
own heart, since she has nothing else, and heart-eating produces all
kinds of symptoms. I am absolutely powerless in such a case, though
sometimes I make a diagnosis which I think may be correct, sometimes I
think there is some organic trouble which I can mitigate. But always I
fall back upon the miserable truth which I am convinced underlies her
whole existence. She is a creature born into a life which does not and
never will afford her the proper food for her physical and spiritual
needs. Oh, the horror in this world, and what am I to set myself to
right it? Shut the door."

"The horses are uneasy," James said.

"Never mind, shut the door. Clemency is away, and Emma out in the
kitchen. I must speak to somebody, or I shall go mad."

James shut the door and turned to Gordon, who sat rigid in his chair,
his hands clutching the arms. "Do you think I did right?" he groaned.
"You know what I did. Was it right?"

"If you mean about your wife," James said, "I think you did entirely
right."

"But you could not," Gordon returned bitterly. "It was too much for you
to attempt, and yet she was nothing to you as she was to me, and the sin
would not have been so terrible."

"I had not the courage," James replied simply.

"You did not think it right. You did not wish to burden your soul with
such a responsibility. I was wrong to try to shift it upon you, wrong
and cowardly, but she was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; it was
a double crime for me, murder and suicide. It was not because you had
not the courage: you have faced surgical operations and dissecting. You
dared not commit what you were not sure was not a crime. There is no use
in your hedging, Elliot. I know the truth."

"Still I think you did right," James said stubbornly. "She had to die
anyway. Death was upon her. You simply hastened it."

Gordon looked at James, and his eyes seemed to fairly blaze with somber
fire; for a moment the young man thought his reason was unhinged. "But
what am I? Who is any man to take whip or spur to the decrees of the
Almighty, to hasten them?"

"She was suffering--" James began.

"What of that? Who can say, though she had led the life of a saint on
earth, so far as any one could see, what subtle sins of life itself he