rative it was not to get him out of humor. "I never meant to try
to influence you, Charles," she said, "except as anyone tries to help
those about one. And certainly you've been the one that has put us all in
our present position. That's why it distressed me for you even to talk of
undoing your work."

Whitney smiled satirically, mysteriously. "I'll do what I think best,"
was all he replied. And presently he added, "though I don't feel like
doing anything. It seems to me I don't care what happens, or whether I
live--or--don't. I'll go to Saint X. I'm just about strong enough to
stand the trip--and have Schulze come out to Point Helen this evening."

"Why not save your strength and have him come here?" urged Matilda.

"He wouldn't," replied her husband. "Last time I saw him he looked me
over and said: 'Champagne. If you don't stop it you won't live. Don't
come here again unless you cut out that poison.' But I never could resist
champagne. So I told myself he was an old crank, and found a great doctor
I could hire to agree with me. No use to send for Schulze to come all
this distance. I might even have to go to his office if I was at Saint X.
He won't go to see anybody who's able to move about. 'As they want _me_,
let 'em come _to_ me, just as I'd go to them if I wanted them,' he says.
'The air they get on the way is part of the cure.' Besides, he and I had
a quarrel. He was talking his nonsense against religion, and I said
something, and he implied I wasn't as straight in business as I should
be--quoted something about 'He that hasteth to be rich shall not be
innocent,' and one thing led to another, and finally he said, with that
ugly jeer of his: 'You pious bandits are lucky to have a forgiving God to
go to. Now we poor devils have only our self-respect, and _it_ never
forgives anything.'" Whitney laughed, reflected, laughed again. "Yes, I
must see Schulze. Maybe--Anyhow, I'm going to Saint X--going home, or as
near home as anything my money has left me."

He drowsed off. She sat watching him--the great beak, the bulging
forehead, the thin, cruel lips; and everywhere in the garden of
artificial flowers which formed the surface of her nature, hiding its
reality even from herself, there appeared the poisonous snakes of hateful
thoughts to shoot their fangs and hiss at him. She shrank and shuddered;
yet--"It's altogether his own fault that I feel this way toward him as he
lies dying," she said to herself, resorting to hu