that recalled him to the
case in hand. He rose and walked quickly to her side. Her eyes were
closed, her face was black with congested blood. He laid his finger on
her pulse. It was feeble.

"It will not be long now," he thought.

He went toward his chair. He felt a sudden distaste for it, a desire for
motion. He walked up and down the room rather more rapidly than before.

"If I were an ordinary man," he thought, "I suppose that tortured
creature on the bed would haunt me to my death. Rot! A murderer I should
be called if the facts were known, I suppose. Well, she is worse. Did I
permit her to live she would make the living hell of four people."

The woman gave a sudden awful cry, the cry of a lost soul shot into the
night of eternity. The stillness had been so absolute, the cry broke
that stillness so abruptly and so horridly, that the doctor,
strong-brained, strong-nerved as he was, gave a violent start, and the
sweat started from his body.

"I am a fool," he exclaimed angrily, welcoming the sound of his voice;
"but I wish to God it were day and there were noises outside."

He strode hurriedly up and down the room, casting furtive glances at the
bed. The night was quiet again, but still that cry rang through it and
lashed his brain. He recalled the theory that sound never dies. The
waves of space had yielded this to him.

"Good God!" he thought. "Am I going to pieces? If I let this wretch,
this criminal die, I save four people. If I let her live, I ruin their
lives. The life of a man of brain and pride and heart; the life of a
woman of beauty and intellect and honor; the lives of two children of
unknown potentialities, for whom the world has now a warm heart. 'The
greatest good of the greatest number'--the principle that governs civil
law. Has not even the worthy individual been sacrificed to it again and
again? Does it not hang the criminal dangerous to the community? And is
that called murder? What am I at this moment but law epitomized? Shall I
hesitate? My God, am I hesitating? Conscience--is it that? A superfluous
instinct transmitted by my ancestors and coddled by a woman--is it that
which has sprung from its grave, rattling its bones? '_Conscience
makes_'--oh, shame that I should succumb when so much is at stake--that
I should hesitate when the welfare of four human beings trembles in the
balance! '_Conscience_'--that in the moment of my supreme power I should
falter!"

He returned to the woman. He r