"He'd better let me hear him!" growled Capper. "I wish to heaven you
were married. That's the kernel of the difficulty. You want a wife.
You'd be keen enough then. I shouldn't be afraid of your letting go when
I wasn't looking."
"Ah!" Lucas said, faintly smiling. "But what of the wife?"
"She'd be in her element," maintained Capper stoutly. "She'd be to you what the mainspring is to a watch, and glory in it. Haven't you seen such women? I have, scores of 'em, ready made for the purpose. No, you will only go through my treatment with a woman to hold you up. It's a process that needs the utmost vitality, the utmost courage, and—something great to live for—a motive power behind to push you on. There's only one motive power that I can think of strong enough to keep you moving. And that is most unfortunately absent. Find the woman, I tell you, find the woman! And—under Providence—I'll do the rest!"
He dropped back in his chair, cracking his fingers fiercely, his keen eyes narrowly observant of every shade of expression on his patient's face.
Lucas was still smiling, but his eyes had grown absent. He looked unutterably tired.
"Yes," he said slowly at length. "I am afraid you have asked the impossible of me now. But, notwithstanding that, if I could see my way to it, I would place myself in your hands without reservation—and take my chance. There are times now and then—now and then—" his words quickened a little, "when a man would almost give the very soul out of his body to be at peace—to be at peace; times when it's downright agony to watch a fly buzzing up and down the pane and know he hasn't even the strength for that—when every muscle is in torture, and every movement means hell—" He broke off; his lips usually so steady had begun to twitch. "I'm a fool, Capper," he murmured apologetically. "Make allowances for a sick man!"
"Look here!" said Capper. "This is a big decision for you to make off-hand. You can take three months anyway to think it over. You are getting stronger, you know. By then you'll be stronger still. You won't be well. Nothing but surgical measures can ever make you well. And you'll go on suffering that infernal pain. But three months one way or another won't make much difference. I am due in London in September for the Schultz Medical Conference. I'll run over then and see if you've made up your mind."
"Will you, doctor? That's real kind of you." Lucas's eyes brightened. He stretched out a hand which Capper grasped and laid gently down. "And if you undertake the job—"
"If you are fit to go through it," Capper broke in, "I'll do it right away before I leave. You'll spend the winter on your back. And in the spring I'll come again and finish the business. That second operation is a more delicate affair than the first, but I don't consider it more dangerous. By this time next year, or soon after, you'll be walking like an ordinary human being. I'll have you as lissom as an Indian."
He cracked his fingers one after the other in quick succession and rose. A moment he stood looking down at the smooth face that had flushed unwontedly at his words; then bending, he lightly tapped his patient's chest. "Meanwhile, my friend," he said, "you keep a stiff upper lip, and cherchez la femme—cherchez la femme toujours! You'll be a sound man some day and she won't mind waiting if she's the right sort."