sful of all of his
profession. But this was an unusual case. This was--O God how could he
bear losing this one?

He had known her from a little girl of eight till now, when at sixteen,
bright, beautiful, winsome sixteen, he had... what had he done? She
might have had a chance for life--without operation. He had taken that
chance away. And she had trusted him--how she had trusted him! Ah, there
was the bitter drop in the cup the turn of the knife in the raw wound.
When the others had opposed, she had looked up at him with that smile
of hers--how could she smile when she was in such pain?--and whispered:
"Please do whatever you want to, Doctor Burns." And he had answered
confidently: "Good for you, Lucile--if only they'd all trust me like
that I'd show them what I could do!"

Vain boast--wild boast! He had been a fool--twice a fool--thrice a
fool! He was a fool clear through--that was the matter with him--a proud
fool who had thought that with a thrust of his keen-edged tools he
could turn Death himself aside.

And when he had tried his hand a second time, in the last futile effort
to avert the impending disaster, she had trusted him just the same. When
he had said to her, speaking close to her dull ear: "Dear little girl,
I'm going to ask you to go to sleep again for me," she had turned
her head upon the pillow, that tortured young head--he would not have
thought she could move it at all--and had smiled at him again... for the
last time... He would remember that smile while he lived.

He got up from his chair as the intolerable memory smote him again, as
it had been smiting him these three hours since the end had come. He
began to pace the floor, back and forth back and forth. There were those
who said that R. P. Burns threw off his cases easily, did not worry
about them, did not take it to heart when they went wrong. It is a thing
often said of the men who must turn from one patient to another, and
show to the second no hint of how the first may be faring. Those who say
it do not know--can never know.

The hours wore on. Burns could not sleep, could not even relax and rest.
To the first agony of disappointment succeeded a depression so profound
that it seemed to him he could never rise above it and take up his work
again. A hundred times he went painfully over the details of the case,
from first to last. Why had he done as he had? Why had he not listened
to Grayson, to Van Horn, to Fields? Only Butler had backed hi