He was in the shadow and had drawn a chair for her near Nelson outside the circle of light, from which she was glad to escape. He took the seat under the light himself. When an ice was served, the small tables were drawn together. Alice, occupied with Nelson, who inspired by his vis-à-vis had summoned something of his grand air, lost the conversation of the circle until she heard Doctor Bryson, and turned with Nelson to listen. He was thanking Mrs. De Castro for a compliment.
"I am always glad to hear anything kind of my profession." He spoke simply and his manner Alice thought engaging. "It is a high calling--and I know of but one higher. We hear the complaint that nowadays medicine is a savagely mercenary profession. If a measure of truth lies in the charge I think it is due to the fact that doctors are victims of the mercenary spirit about them. It's a part of the very air they breathe. They can't escape it. The doctor, to begin with, must spend one small fortune to get his degree. He must spend another to equip himself for his work. Ten of the best years of his life go practically to getting ready. His expense for instruments, appliances, and new and increasingly elaborate appointments is continuous."
"But doctor," Fritzie Venable leaned forward with a grave and lengthened face, "think of the fees!"
The doctor enjoyed the laugh. "Quite true. When you find an ambitious doctor, unless his energy is restrained by a sense of his high responsibility, he may be possessed of greed. If a surgeon be set too fast on fame he will affect the spectacular and cut too much and too freely. I admit all of this. My plea is for the conscientious doctor, and believe me, there are many such. Nor must you forget that, at the best, half our lives we are too young to please and half our lives too old."
"Hamilton said the other night," observed Robert Kimberly, filling in the pause, "that a good doctor must spend his time in killing, not his own patients, but his own business."
"No other professional man is called on to do that," observed Bryson. "Indeed, the saddest of all possible proofs of the difficulties of our calling is found in the fact that the suicide rate among doctors is the highest in the learned professions."
MacBirney expressed surprise. "I had no idea of such a thing. Had you, Mr. Kimberly?" he asked with his sudden energy.
"I have known it, but perhaps only because I have been interested in questions of that kind."
Dolly's attention was arrested at once by the mention of suicide. "Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "Don't let us talk about suicide."
But Robert Kimberly could not always be shut off and this subject he pursued with a certain firmness. Some of the family were disturbed but no one presumed to interfere. "Suicide," he went on, "has a painful interest for many people. Has your study of it, doctor, ever led you to believe that it presupposes insanity?" he asked of Bryson.