“In a word, you dreaded excessive physical suffering.”
“Oh, yes.”
“My child, there will be no such suffering at all. The death you so much dreaded will be the easiest of all deaths.”
She looked up at him with calm, incredulous wonder.
“Eudora, I speak the words of truth and soberness, as well as of science and experience,” said the doctor, gravely.
“Ah, how do you know? How can any one know. I myself can only judge by this.” Here she put her thumb and fingers towards her throat, but the doctor arrested her moving hand, and held it while he said:
“You must not do that—you will only frighten yourself with false terrors. An incomplete pressure like that is very distressing, a complete one is quite the reverse.”
“Ah, how can we be sure of that?”
“By the light of science, which shows us that the instantaneous congestion of the brain consequent upon such a pressure prevents all suffering. So, my child, dismiss all dread of pain, you will not have to bear it.”
“I do not know. No one has ever come back from that dread mystery to tell us what it was.”