When he had finished, she sat looking at him for a moment, feeling a sudden motherly desire to help this curiously capable, curiously inept man, whose strong white surgeon's hands showed themselves firmly gripping each other beyond frail, frayed wristbands.
"But surely if you hold that there is a chance of life for him----" she began.
He rose, and resting his arm on the mantelpiece, looked down on her mentally and physically.
"Life!" he echoed. "What is life worth to him? and how do you know that what we call death ends it? Mind you, I'm not speaking from my own beliefs--they are--well! not much! Belief is positive--I'm not. But you, Mrs. Tressilian. Why do you and your sort hold this life so dear, and why are you all at the same time in such a blessed hurry to get another hour or two of it in which to do something when you believe in a fuller, better life beyond death? It isn't logical. My mother used to say that when she taught me, a three-year-old, about Cain and Abel, I refused to give blame to the former on the ground that he had only sent Abel to heaven. That should be your position."
"And yours?"
"Oh! mine is simple. To a doctor life is merely the converse of death, and death is the devil! We cannot prescribe for a corpse--or for the matter of that levy a fee for so doing--and that is the end and aim of doctoring."
"Why should you say those things, Dr. Ramsay?" she asked quietly. "You know you never take one--at least you would take none from me."
He flushed slightly. "Because I did nothing--and you were an interesting case. I levy a big fee of experience, Mrs. Tressilian. But concerning this boy--my colleagues are against me, and----" He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think the world will come to an end if No. 36 goes out of it. I shouldn't mind if it did--it isn't worth much."
"But are you not bound?" she persisted. "You have no right to judge what his life might be. A doctor's duty is to save life and defy death at all costs."
His face softened immensely.