n in the words came
from the effort at self-mastery. Then the professor rose and looked
about him vaguely for his hat. When he had found it, "Come along," he
bade Brenton shortly. "We've got to get it over, even if it kills her.
I believe in anaesthetics and hypnosis in such a case as this: drugging
the victim and then impressing on him that he has always known the
trouble and that it's certain to come out all right in time. Well, are
you coming?" The voice sharpened again in its impatience to have the
bad hour over.

Out in the street and walking rapidly towards home, the professor spoke
once more. This time, there was no sharpness, but rather the same note
of appeal which Brenton had heard a little earlier.

"Brenton, it's your chance now. I've been showing you the best of all
my science. Now, for God's sake, give me back the best of your
religion. In a time like this, science can't help us much. It shows us
all the worst of things, and shuts down before whatever best there is.
If your religion is any good at all, now is the time we need to make it
count. Else, what's its use?"

Before the unexpected, swift appeal, Brenton was dumb. What was the
use, especially to a man like Professor Opdyke? It was all very well to
talk about Reed's being safe in his Maker's hands, when common sense
and science alike were insisting upon it that it was in all probability
the hands of the surgeon who could rescue him from peril; that much
less depended upon prayer than on the sterilizing processes. Of course,
no one, however scientific, could deny the Master's law at the back of
everything; but that law was a trifle too remote to be a potent source
of comfort to a quivering mind. Besides, when, in all probability, it
was that same law, either in breach or in observance, which had caused
the trouble, it seemed a little bit unmerciful to brandish the cause as
an instrument of healing.

After all, in such a case as this, what was religion good for? One
believed things, but only so far as they were based on law; and law is
a stiff sort of moral plaster to apply to a bleeding wound. Of course,
there was an infinite array of platitudes, phrased to fit every sort of
emergency known to man. However, in a crisis such as this, it seemed to
Brenton something little short of deliberate insult to offer a
platitude to a man of Professor Opdyke's sort. All he could find to do,
then, was to stand by and hold himself and them quite steady.

And s