him?"

Justine hesitated. "Not in his expectation of recovery--no one does."

"But you think they can keep the poor child alive till Langhope and her
husband get back?"

There was a moment's pause; then Justine murmured: "It can be done...I
think...."

"Yes--it's horrible," said Mr. Tredegar suddenly, as if in answer to her
thought.

She looked up in surprise, and saw his eye resting on her with what
seemed like a mist of sympathy on its vitreous surface. Her lips
trembled, parting as if for speech--but she looked away without
answering.

"These new devices for keeping people alive," Mr. Tredegar continued;
"they increase the suffering besides prolonging it?"

"Yes--in some cases."

"In this case?"

"I am afraid so."

The lawyer drew out his fine cambric handkerchief, and furtively wiped a
slight dampness from his forehead. "I wish to God she had been killed!"
he said.

Justine lifted her head again, with an answering exclamation. "Oh, yes!"

"It's infernal--the time they can make it last."

"It's useless!" Justine broke out.

"Useless?" He turned his critical glance on her. "Well, that's beside
the point--since it's inevitable."

She wavered a moment--but his words had loosened the bonds about her
heart, and she could not check herself so suddenly. "Why inevitable?"

Mr. Tredegar looked at her in surprise, as though wondering at so
unprofessional an utterance from one who, under ordinary circumstances,
showed the absolute self-control and submission of the well-disciplined
nurse.

"Human life is sacred," he said sententiously.

"Ah, that must have been decreed by some one who had never suffered!"
Justine exclaimed.

Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately: he evidently knew how to make
allowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of her
friend's suffering: "Society decreed it--not one person," he corrected.

"Society--science--religion!" she murmured, as if to herself.

"Precisely. It's the universal consensus--the result of the world's
accumulated experience. Cruel in individual instances--necessary for the
general welfare. Of course your training has taught you all this; but I
can understand that at such a time...."

"Yes," she said, rising wearily as Wyant came in.

* * * * *

Her worst misery, now, was to have to discuss Bessy's condition with
Wyant. To the young physician Bessy was no longer a suffering,
agonizing creature: she was a cas