"Have you ever talked the whole business over—you two—since she came out?"
"Doc," said Sim Gage, "I told you, I tried my damnedest, and I just couldn't. I says to myself, lady like she was, it wouldn't be right fer a man like me to marry her noways on earth."
"And what did she say?"
Sim Gage began to stammer painfully. "I don't know what she would say," said he. "I ain't never asked her none yet."
"Well, I reckon you'll have to," said Doctor Barnes slowly, after a long time in thought; "if she lives."
"Lives? Doc, you don't mean to tell me she's that sick?"
"She isn't trying to fight very hard. When your patient would rather die than live, you've got hard lines, as a doctor. It's hard lines here more ways than one."
"Die—her!—What would I do then, Doc?" asked Sim Gage, so simply that Doctor Barnes looked at him keenly, gravely.
"It's not a question about you, you damn sagebrusher," said he at last, gently. "Question is, what's best for her. If I didn't feel such a woman was too good to be wasted I'd say, let her go; ethics be damned out here. If she gets well she'll have to decide some time what's to do about this whole business. That brings you into the question again. It was a bad bet, but deceived as she was, she's put herself under your protection. And mine!"
"You see," he added, "that's something that really doesn't come under my profession, but it's something that's up to every decent man."