it to hoist itself above the sin."

"Is she such a--"

The doctor interrupted, less out of charity for Mrs. Brenton than from
his own impatient testiness.

"Wait and see, boy. Wait and see. It is quite evident that she's a gone
case, that nothing can save her. Sometimes, I even shudder for her
husband."

"Brenton? He's immune."

"There's never any telling. She and her friends probably have been at
work with pick and shovel, for months, trying to undermine his
foundations. They are an insidious crew, Reed, totally insidious. If a
man is the least bit nervous, their absent-treatment methods get in
their work with a fatal effect sometimes. I've been watching them for
years. They mine and countermine, until it isn't safe to predict who is
immune and who isn't. For all either of us know, you may be doomed to
be the next victim. If you are, though, send for me. I'll cure you of
it, if it takes a dose of lysol. Well, good bye, boy. I'll drop in
again, within a day or so."

The doctor went his way, flinging back a trail of chaff as long as his
voice could carry to the room above, a room curiously dim and still, it
seemed to him, as he came out into the strident sunshine of the July
day. Once in the street, moreover, and safely out of range of Opdyke's
windows, his fun dropped from him, and he shook his sturdy shoulders,
as if he were trying to shake them free from an ugly, yet invisible,
burden.

"There's a change there," he muttered to himself; "and I'll be hanged
if I can analyze it. It's a curious sort of settling down of the boy's
whole nature, as if he had thrown off some maddening strain or other,
as if he were getting some new sort of grip upon himself. I wonder what
it is. He's not better, nor worse; it can't be his health, then.
Bodily, he is just about holding his own; nervously, he is steadying. I
believe I'll talk it up with Olive; he may have given her a clue."

Olive, however, questioned, had no ideas upon the subject. She too had
noticed the change, had felt it, rather; it was too slight really to be
noticed. She had wondered at it. It was as if Opdyke were slowly
tightening all his contacts with what of life there still was left to
him, determining to make the best of a bad matter, and to extract all
the enjoyment he was able out of his narrowing surroundings.

Reason about the cause of this as Olive would, she could not fathom it.
Was Opdyke merely sickening of the individual members of his scanty
c