year she
astonished everyone by wearing quite a high collar at a time when it
was completely out of fashion. Well, one day this very woman was shown
into my consulting-room. When the footman was gone she suddenly tore
off the upper part of her dress. 'For Gods sake do something for me!'
she cried. Then I saw what the trouble was. A rodent ulcer was eating
its way upwards, coiling on in its serpiginous fashion until the end of
it was flush with her collar. The red streak of its trail was lost
below the line of her bust. Year by year it had ascended and she had
heightened her dress to hide it, until now it was about to invade her
face. She had been too proud to confess her trouble, even to a medical
man."

"And did you stop it?"

"Well, with zinc chloride I did what I could. But it may break out
again. She was one of those beautiful white-and-pink creatures who are
rotten with struma. You may patch but you can't mend."

"Dear! dear! dear!" cries the general practitioner, with that kindly
softening of the eyes which had endeared him to so many thousands. "I
suppose we mustn't think ourselves wiser than Providence, but there are
times when one feels that something is wrong in the scheme of things.
I've seen some sad things in my life. Did I ever tell you that case
where Nature divorced a most loving couple? He was a fine young
fellow, an athlete and a gentleman, but he overdid athletics. You know
how the force that controls us gives us a little tweak to remind us
when we get off the beaten track. It may be a pinch on the great toe
if we drink too much and work too little. Or it may be a tug on our
nerves if we dissipate energy too much. With the athlete, of course,
it's the heart or the lungs. He had bad phthisis and was sent to
Davos. Well, as luck would have it, she developed rheumatic fever,
which left her heart very much affected. Now, do you see the dreadful
dilemma in which those poor people found themselves? When he came
below four thousand feet or so, his symptoms became terrible. She
could come up about twenty-five hundred and then her heart reached its
limit. They had several interviews half way down the valley, which
left them nearly dead, and at last, the doctors had to absolutely
forbid it. And so for four years they lived within three miles of each
other and never met. Every morning he would go to a place which
overlooked the chalet in which she lived and would wave a great white