"'He is in Spain,' she replied.
"'Oh, indeed!' said I with some surprise. 'Well, when he returns, we can talk about it.'
"Mrs. Braxfield shook her head.
"'No, I want it done now, while he's away,' she said, and nothing that I could say would shake her from her purpose. I fathered her, and bullied her, and lectured her, but she stood her ground. Her lips trembled; she was afraid of me, and still more desperately afraid of what waited for her. I could see her catch her breath and turn pale as she thought upon the ordeal. But the same sort of timid courage which had made her push into my room before I could refuse to see her, sustained her now. I raised my hands at last in despair.
"'Very well,' I said. 'Give me your husband's address. I will send a letter to him, and if he consents, we will not wait for his return.'
"'No,' she insisted stubbornly, 'I do not want him to know anything about it. But if you will not attend me, no doubt someone else will.'
"That was my trouble. The throat, look at it how you will, is a ticklish affair. If she went away from me, Heaven knows into whose hands she might fall. She had some money and was well dressed. Some quack would have used his blundering knife. I could have shaken her for her obstinacy, and would have, if I had had a hope that I would shake it out of her. But she had screwed herself up to a pitch of determination almost unbelievable in her. I could make her cry; I could not make her draw back from her resolve. Nor, on the other hand, could I allow her to go out of my house and hand herself over to be butchered by any Tom, Dick, or Harry of a barber on the look-out for a fat fee. So I gave in.
"I got her a lodging in this town, and a woman to look after her, and I did what needed to be done with as little pain as might be.
"'You won't hurt me more than you can help,' she said in a sort of childish wail. And then she shut her eyes and bore it with an extraordinary fortitude; while, for my part, I never worked more neatly or more quickly in my life, and in a few days she was quite comfortable again.
"But here she began to perplex me. For though the wound healed, and there was no fever, she did not mend. She lay from day to day in an increasing weakness, for which I could not account. I drew a chair up to her bed one morning and took my seat.