eak to
befall me, I would have to be among the rare exceptions--also my
wife would have to be among the number of those rare exceptions. If a
mathematician were to apply the law of chance to these facts, the result
of his operation would show but slight chance of a catastrophe, as
compared with the absolute certainty of a series of misfortunes,
sufferings, troubles, tears, and perhaps tragic accidents which
the breaking of my engagement would cause. So I say that the
mathematician--who is, even more than you, a man of science, a man of
a more infallible science--the mathematician would conclude that wisdom
was not with you doctors, but with me."

"You believe it, sir!" exclaimed the other. "But you deceive yourself."
And he continued, driving home his point with a finger which seemed to
George to pierce his very soul. "Twenty cases identical with your own
have been patiently observed, from the beginning to the end. Nineteen
times the woman was infected by her husband; you hear me, sir, nineteen
times out of twenty! You believe that the disease is without danger, and
you take to yourself the right to expose your wife to what you call the
chance of your being one of those exceptions, for whom our remedies
are without effect. Very well; it is necessary that you should know the
disease which your wife, without being consulted, will run a chance of
contracting. Take that book, sir; it is the work of my teacher. Read it
yourself. Here, I have marked the passage."

He held out the open book; but George could not lift a hand to take it.

"You do not wish to read it?" the other continued. "Listen to me."
And in a voice trembling with passion, he read: "'I have watched the
spectacle of an unfortunate young woman, turned into a veritable monster
by means of a syphilitic infection. Her face, or rather let me say
what was left of her face, was nothing but a flat surface seamed with
scars.'"

George covered his face, exclaiming, "Enough, sir! Have mercy!"

But the other cried, "No, no! I will go to the very end. I have a
duty to perform, and I will not be stopped by the sensibility of your
nerves."

He went on reading: "'Of the upper lip not a trace was left; the ridge
of the upper gums appeared perfectly bare.'" But then at the young man's
protests, his resolution failed him. "Come," he said, "I will stop. I am
sorry for you--you who accept for another person, for the woman you say
you love, the chance of a disease which you