cannot even endure to hear
described. Now, from whom did that woman get syphilis? It is not I who
am speaking, it is the book. 'From a miserable scoundrel who was not
afraid to enter into matrimony when he had a secondary eruption.' All
that was established later on--'and who, moreover, had thought it best
not to let his wife be treated for fear of awakening her suspicions!'"

The doctor closed the book with a bang. "What that man has done, sir, is
what you want to do."

George was edging toward the door; he could no longer look the doctor in
the eye. "I should deserve all those epithets and still more brutal ones
if I should marry, knowing that my marriage would cause such horrors.
But that I do not believe. You and your teachers--you are specialists,
and consequently you are driven to attribute everything to the disease
you make the subject of your studies. A tragic case, an exceptional
case, holds a kind of fascination for you; you think it can never be
talked about enough."

"I have heard that argument before," said the doctor, with an effort at
patience.

"Let me go on, I beg you," pleaded George. "You have told me that out of
every seven men there is one syphilitic. You have told me that there are
one hundred thousand in Paris, coming and going, alert, and apparently
well."

"It is true," said the doctor, "that there are one hundred thousand
who are actually at this moment not visibly under the influence of the
disease. But many thousands have passed into our hospitals, victims of
the most frightful ravages that our poor bodies can support. These--you
do not see them, and they do not count for you. But again, if it
concerned no one but yourself, you might be able to argue thus. What I
declare to you, what I affirm with all the violence of my conviction,
is that you have not the right to expose a human creature to such
chances--rare, as I know, but terrible, as I know still better. What
have you to answer to that?"

"Nothing," stammered George, brought to his knees at last. "You are
right about that. I don't know what to think."

"And in forbidding you marriage," continued the doctor, "is it the same
as if I forbade it forever? Is it the same as if I told you that you
could never be cured? On the contrary, I hold out to you every hope; but
I demand of you a delay of three or four years, because it will take me
that time to find out if you are among the number of those unfortunate
ones whom I pity with all