t I must die if you do not take off my arm at the shoulder?'

'Humanly speaking,' replied the other gravely, 'I am quite sure that
gangrene will set in before to-morrow morning, and that is certain
death in your case.'

'Why do you say, in my case?'

'Because,' Pieri answered with a little impatience, 'if it began in
your foot, for instance, or in your hand, it would take some little
time to reach the vital parts, and the arm or leg could still be
amputated; but in your case it will set in so near the heart that no
operation will be of any use after it begins. Do you understand?'

'Perfectly. I shall take less time to die, for the same reason.'

Severi was very quiet about it; but the Mother Superior turned on him
suddenly from the window, her small face very white.

'It is suicide,' she said--'deliberate, intentional suicide, and no
right-thinking man, priest or layman, would call it by any other name,
let Doctor Pieri say what he will! You are in full possession of your
senses, and even of your health and strength, at this moment, and you
are assured that you run no risk if you submit to the doctors, but that
if you will not you must die! You are choosing death where you can
choose life, and that is suicide if anything is! Doctor Pieri knows well
enough what a good priest would say, and so do I, who have been a nurse
for a quarter of a century! If the injury were internal, and if there
were a real risk to your life in operating, you would have the right,
the moral right, to choose between the danger of dying under ether and
the comparative certainty of dying of the injury. But this is a specific
case. You are young, strong, absolutely healthy, and the chance of your
dying from the anaesthetic is not one in thousands, whereas, if nothing
is done, death is certain. I ask you, before God and man and on your
honour, whether you do not know that you are committing suicide--nothing
less than cowardly, dastardly self-murder!'

'If I am, it is my affair,' answered Giovanni coldly; 'but you need
not leave out the rest. You believe that if I choose to die I shall go
straight to everlasting punishment. I believe that if there is a
God--and I do not deny that there may be--I shall not be damned because
I would rather not live at all than go on living as half a man. And
now, if you will let me have a cup of coffee and a roll, I shall be
very grateful, for I have had nothing to eat since yesterday at one
o'clock!'

He prob