"What is it you wish to know?"
"Tell me exactly how my wife and child are, so that I may be prepared"--his voice faltered--"for the worst."
"You do not know, then?"
"I fear--but I do not know."
"We doctors have frequently hard duties to perform, Mr. Cohen--duties which to others appear cruel. I will speak plainly; it will be best. It is due to your wife's gentle and loving nature that I have not done so before, and I yielded to her imploring solicitations, deeming it likely that you would discover the state of the case from your own powers of observation. Mr. Cohen, I have rarely had so sad and affecting an experience as I find here. It would be wrong for me to say that your wife is not in danger; she has been in danger for some days past, and it is only an inward moral strength that has supported her through the crisis. She has still a vital power which, under certain conditions, will be of immense assistance to her, which will enable her--so far as it is in human power to judge--to pull through. You will gather from my words that her safety, nay, her life, depends not so much upon herself as upon others--upon you to some extent, but to a much greater extent upon her babe. It is her deep love for you both that has sustained her, that still sustains her. Were anything to happen to either of you I should fear the gravest results. It would react upon her, and in her delicate state there would be no hope."
"I am physically strong and well, doctor; nothing is likely to happen to me. Her danger, then, lies in our child?"
"You have clearly expressed it. Her life hangs upon the life of her child. So fine and delicate are her susceptibilities, so profound is her love for those who are dear to her, that I, a doctor, who is supposed to be nothing if he is not scientific, am compelled to confess that here my learned theories are at fault. I will no longer disguise from you that her life hangs upon the balance."
"And our child, doctor, how is it with her?"
"I can answer you with less certainty. Something of the delicate susceptibilities of the mother has in the course of nature entered her child's being. The baby is not strong, but she may grow into strength; it is as yet a problem to be solved, and a physician's skill is almost powerless to help to a happy issue. Hope, Mr. Cohen, hope; and in bidding you hope, and in explaining matters to you, I have not said all that it is necessary for me to say. There remains something more."
"One question first, doctor," said Aaron in a hushed voice; "if our child lives there is hope that my wife will live."