kindness
might be interpreted as moral obloquy!

Walls; queer, invisible walls that receded whenever she reached
out, but that still remained between her and what she sought. The
wall of the sky, the wall of the horizon, the wall behind which
each human being hid--the wall behind which she herself was hiding!
If only her mother had lived, her darling mother!

Presently the unhappy puzzlement left her face; and an inward glow
began to lighten it. The curtain before one mystery was torn aside,
and she saw in reality what lay behind the impulse that had led her
into the young man's room. Somebody to whom she would be necessary,
who for days would have to depend upon her for the needs of life.
An inarticulate instinct which now found expression. Upon what this
instinct was based she could not say; she was conscious only of its
insistence. Briefly explained, she was as the child who discards
the rag baby for the living one. Spurlock was no longer a man
before this instinct; he was a child in trouble.

Her cogitations were dissipated by a knock on the door. The visitor
was the hotel manager, who respectfully announced that the doctor
was ready for her. So Ruth took another step toward her
destination, which we in our vanity call destiny.

"Will he live?" asked Ruth.

"Thanks to you," said the doctor. "Without proper medical care, he
would have been dead by morning." He smiled at her as he smiled at
death, cheerfully.

The doctor's smile is singular; there is no other smile that
reaches the same level. It is the immediate inspiration of
confidence; it alleviates pain, because we know by that smile that
pain is soon to leave us; it becomes the bulwark against our
depressive thoughts of death; and it is the promise that we still
have a long way to go before we reach the Great Terminal.

In passing, why do we fear death? For our sins? Rather, isn't it
the tremendous inherent human curiosity to know what is going to
happen to-morrow that causes us to wince at the thought of
annihilation? A subconscious resentment against the idea of
entering darkness while our neighbour will proceed with his petty
affairs as usual?

"It's nip and tuck," said the doctor; "but we'll pull him through.
Probably his first serious bout with John Barleycorn. If he had
eaten food, this wouldn't have happened. It is not a dissipated
face."

"No; it is only--what shall I say?--troubled. The ragged edge."

"Yes. This is also the ragged edge of