hink."

Her words fell on his ear with a strange shock of wonder. He had often
heard her pronounce them before--what if at last they were true?

He advanced a step or two into the dim room. "I hope that's not so,
Zeena," he said.

She continued to gaze at him through the twilight with a mien of wan
authority, as of one consciously singled out for a great fate. "I've got
complications," she said.

Ethan knew the word for one of exceptional import. Almost everybody in
the neighbourhood had "troubles," frankly localized and specified;
but only the chosen had "complications." To have them was in itself a
distinction, though it was also, in most cases, a death-warrant. People
struggled on for years with "troubles," but they almost always succumbed
to "complications."

Ethan's heart was jerking to and fro between two extremities of feeling,
but for the moment compassion prevailed. His wife looked so hard and
lonely, sitting there in the darkness with such thoughts.

"Is that what the new doctor told you?" he asked, instinctively lowering
his voice.

"Yes. He says any regular doctor would want me to have an operation."

Ethan was aware that, in regard to the important question of surgical
intervention, the female opinion of the neighbourhood was divided, some
glorying in the prestige conferred by operations while others shunned
them as indelicate. Ethan, from motives of economy, had always been glad
that Zeena was of the latter faction.

In the agitation caused by the gravity of her announcement he sought
a consolatory short cut. "What do you know about this doctor anyway?
Nobody ever told you that before."

He saw his blunder before she could take it up: she wanted sympathy, not
consolation.

"I didn't need to have anybody tell me I was losing ground every day.
Everybody but you could see it. And everybody in Bettsbridge knows
about Dr. Buck. He has his office in Worcester, and comes over once
a fortnight to Shadd's Falls and Bettsbridge for consultations. Eliza
Spears was wasting away with kidney trouble before she went to him, and
now she's up and around, and singing in the choir."

"Well, I'm glad of that. You must do just what he tells you," Ethan
answered sympathetically.

She was still looking at him. "I mean to," she said. He was struck by a
new note in her voice. It was neither whining nor reproachful, but drily
resolute.

"What does he want you should do?" he asked, with a mounting vision of
fresh