he had married him, what a ruin her
life had been! There had been, again and again, thank Heaven! periods
of peace, periods of regained self-respect, of the enjoyment of the
respect of others. These had been secured by flight only, by
concealment of her whereabouts, and were of varying lengths of
duration. Two years ago, with her hard-earned savings, she had paid his
passage out to Africa. She had not believed him likely to earn the
money to return, and had looked upon him as happily dead to her. Dead,
indeed, perhaps. Until yesterday, when she had helped to lay him,
unconscious, in the bed of the private ward. She guessed easily that he
had learnt she was in the place, and had been about to seek her when he
had been struck down.

If he should mercifully die!

Not he! she said, bitterly. Men sometimes died in _delirium tremens_.
In every kind of illness, by every sort of accident, men died every
day. Good and useful men, husbands of adoring wives, loving fathers of
families, men needed by their country, by humanity, were swept
mercilessly away. Only such carrion as this was left to fester upon the
earth, to poison the lives of decent men and women. The doctor,
standing above him, looking on the defaced image of what God, for some
mysterious purpose, had made, had no thought but to restore to this
foully-damaged frame the spirit and strength to do its evil work.
Nurses, gentle and dutiful women, would give themselves to revive in
all its corrupt activity the temporarily dormant mind and body.

Ought this to be? Where was the righteousness of it--the sense? Since
that drug to which he was "so susceptible" was a deadly one, would it
not be better to give him more of it? To rid society of a pest
dangerous to its peace, to restore to one suffering, striving,
blameless woman the happiness he had cost her?

"Would that be a crime?" she asked, and set her teeth and cried, "No,
no," with hatred in her heart. Then, horrified at herself, flung
herself over on her pillow, and, burying her face from the light of
day, sobbed long with a tearless sobbing, bringing no relief; and so at
last lay still.

* * * * *

She did not know if she had slept or only lain in the quiet and blank
of mercifully deadened misery when, roused by the sound of her name,
she lifted her head to find the matron of the little hospital standing
beside her bed.

"We are having so much trouble with the D.T. patien