sure enough to want to be responsible for
Tommy's life. You must get a doctor as you go home. You go almost past
Dr. Beswick's in Seventeenth street."

"No, I won't do that; I'd made up my mind already that your treatment
wa'n't thorough enough. You haven't had the experience; you haven't
studied the nature of disease and the cor-what-you-may-call-it between
sin and sickness. I'll call Miss Bowyer if Tommy don't mend before
morning."

Just then it began to rain again. The sudden plash of the downpour and
Phillida's instinctive impulse to get quickly under shelter interrupted
the conversation. A minute later Miss Callender was standing in the
vestibule with a weeping umbrella in her hand, while she heard Mr.
Martin's retreating footsteps, no whit hurried by the fitful gusts of
rain, or the late hour, or the illness at home.

She thought of running after him, but of what use would that be, seeing
his obstination against treating diseases on the mortal plane? She would
have liked to go home with him and beg the mother to send for a doctor;
but she could not feel sure that this would serve the purpose, and while
she debated the rain came on in driving torrents, and the steady beat of
Mr. Martin's steps was lost in the distance and the rush of waters. In
vain she told her mother that the child did not seem very ill, in vain
she told herself during the night that Tommy had only an ordinary cold.
She was restless and wakeful the night long; two or three times she
lighted a match and looked at the slow-going clock on the mantelpiece.

In that hour unbelief in the validity of her cures came into her mind
with a rush that bore down all barriers before it. Her mind went over
to Dr. Beswick's side of the question, and she saw her success in some
cases as the mere effect on the nervous system. In the bitterness of
something like despair she thought herself a deluded and culpable
enthusiast, worthy of ridicule, of contempt, of condemnation. There were
no longer any oscillations of her mind toward the old belief; the
foundations of sand had been swept away, and there was no space to make
a reconstruction. Scarcely could she pray; unbelief tardily admitted
threatened to revenge itself for the long siege by sacking the whole
city. She was almost ready to plunge into Philip's general skepticism,
which had seemed hitherto a horrible abyss. At a quarter to five o'clock
she lighted the gas, turning it low so as not to disturb the others.