ou on a tension. You've not been
quite yourself for several days."

"I am myself. I'm the real fellow--only you haven't known him before. The
other is just--the devil disguised in a goodly garment, one that doesn't
belong to him."

"Oh, no!"

"No question of it. I'm so swearing mad this minute I could kill
somebody,--in other words, that foul fiend of a James Van
Horn--smooth-tongued hypocrite that he is!"

"Has he injured you?"

"Injured me? Knifed me in the back, every chance he got. Always has--but
he never had such a chance as he has now. And plays the part of an angel
of light in that house--fools them all. I'm the ill-tempered incompetent,
he's the forbearing wise man. The case is mine, but he's played the game
till they all have more confidence in him than they have in me. And he's
got all the cards in his hand!"

He flung himself off the couch, and began to pace the room. Speech, once
unloosed, flowed freely enough now,--he could not keep it back.

"The patient is a man of prominence--the matter of his recovery is a
great necessity. If he were able to bear it he ought to be operated upon;
but there isn't one chance in a hundred he'd survive an operation at
present. There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one.
I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it.
Van Horn advises operation--unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that
with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he
considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening.
He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however
things come out I'm in the hole."

"Not if the patient gets well."

"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten,
at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And
if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he
advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but
in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so
mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."

"Would he have liked to operate himself?"

Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his
lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he
first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I
know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table
alive. Don't you see I've had to fight fo