that he won't risk having a
delicate wife on his hands?")

"It's not as if I didn't know," he persisted, "I know she--she lies
on her back and can't move. Is it her spine?"

"No."

"Or her heart?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Is it something worse?"

Jewdwine was silent.

And in the silence Rickman's mind wandered free among all imaginable
horrors and forebodings. At last, out of the silence, there appeared
to him one more terrible than the rest. He saw what Jewdwine must have
meant. He gathered it, not from anything he had said, but from what he
refused to say, from the sternness of his face, from his hesitations,
his reserves. Jewdwine had created the horror for him as vividly as if
he had shaped it into words.

"You needn't tell me what it is. Do you mind telling me whether it's
curable or not?"

"My _dear_ Rickman, if I knew why you are asking all these
questions--"

"They must seem extraordinary. And my reason for asking them is more
extraordinary still."

They measured each other with their eyes. "Then, I think," said
Jewdwine quietly, "I must ask you for your reason."

"The reason is that if you're not going to marry her I am."

"That," said Jewdwine, "is by no means certain. There is not a single
member of her family living except my sister and myself. Therefore I
consider myself responsible. If I were her father or her brother I
would not give my consent to her marrying, and I don't give it now."

"Oh. And why not?"

"For many reasons. Those that applied in my own case are sufficient."

"You only said there was a risk, and that you weren't going to take
it. Now I mean to take it. You see, those fools of doctors may be
mistaken. But whether they're mistaken or not, I shall marry her just
the same."

"The risk, you see, involves her happiness; and judging by what I know
of your temperament--"

"What do you know about my temperament?"

"You know perfectly well what I know about it."

"I know. You don't approve of my morals. I don't altogether blame you,
considering that since I knew Miss Harden I very nearly married
someone else. My code is so different from yours that I should have
considered marrying that woman a lapse from virtue. So the intention
may count against me, if you like."

"Look here, Rickman, that is not altogether what I mean. Neither of us
is fit to marry Miss Harden--and _I_ have given her up." He said it
with the sublime assurance of Jewdwine, the moral man.

"Does i