se not," said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind
of sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it--the
guillotine. Besides, the malignant condition has spread. There is
pressure upon the submaxillary and subclavicular ganglia, and probably
the axillary ganglia also. His respiration, circulation and digestion
will soon be obstructed and strangulation will be rapid."

He sighed and stood with an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his face
rigid, his arms folded. The young man sat down, leaning back in his
chair, and tapped the marble mantelpiece with his idle fingers.

"What shall I tell the young woman?"

"Put on a subdued manner and tell her it is serious, very serious, but
no one can tell, nature is infinitely resourceful."

"That's so hackneyed."

"So much the better," said the old man.

"But if she insists on knowing?"

"Don't give in."

"Shall we not hold out a little hope? She is so young."

"No. For that very reason we mustn't. She'd become too hopeful. My
boy, never say anything superfluous at such a time. There's no use.
The only result is to make them call us ignoramuses and hate us."

"Does he realise?"

"I do not know. While I examined him--you heard--I tried to find out by
asking questions. Once I thought he had no suspicion at all. Then he
seemed to understand his case as well as I did."

"Sarcoma forms like the human embryo," said the younger doctor.

"Yes, like the human embryo," the other assented and entered into a
long elaboration of this idea.

"The germ acts on the cell, as Lancereaux has pointed out, in the same
way as a spermatozoon. It is a micro-organism which penetrates the
tissue, and selects and impregnates it, sets it vibrating, gives it
/another life./ But the exciting agent of this intracellular activity,
instead of being the normal germ of life, is a parasite."

He went on to describe the process minutely and in highly scientific
terms, and ended up by saying:

"The cancerous tissue never achieves full development. It keeps on
without ever reaching a limit. Yes, cancer, in the strictest sense of
the word, is infinite in our organism."

The young doctor bowed assent, and then said:

"Perhaps--no doubt--we shall succeed in time in curing all diseases.
Everything can change. We shall find the proper method for preventing
what we cannot stop when it has once begun. And it is then only that
we shall dare to tell the ravages due to