"First, there will be an ugly and reverberating scandal. In the course of a year or two she will compel him to return in the interest of his career. She will not be able to remain; so proud a woman could not stand the position. Again he will go with her. In a word, my friend's career will be ruined. So many novelists and reporters have written the remaining chapters of this sort of story that it is hardly worth while for me to go any further.
"So much for them. Let us consider the other victims—the children. A morphine-mother in an asylum, a father in a strange land with a woman who is not his wife, the world cognizant of all the facts of the case. They grow up at odds with society. Result, they are morbid, warped, unnormal. In trite old English, their lives are ruined, as are all lives that have not had a fair chance."
He returned abruptly to the bedside. He laid his finger on the woman's pulse.
"No morphine to-night and she dies. A worthless wretch is sent where she belongs. Four people are saved."
His breast swelled. His gray eyes seemed literally to send forth smoke; they suggested some noiseless deadly weapon of war. He exclaimed aloud: "My God! what a power to lie in the hands of one man! I stand here the arbiter of five destinies. It is for me to say whether four people shall be happy or wretched, saved or ruined. I might say, with Nero, 'I am God!'" He laughed. "I am famed for my power to save where others have failed. I am famed in the comic weeklies for having ruined the business of more undertakers than any physician of my day. That has been my rôle, my professional pride. I have never felt so proud as now."
The woman, who had been moving restlessly for some time, twitched suddenly and uncontrollably. She opened her eyes.
"Give it to me—quick!" she demanded. Her voice, always querulous, was raucous; her eyes were wild.
"No," he said, deliberately, "you will have no more morphine; not a drop."
She stared at him incredulously, then laughed.
"Stop joking," she said, roughly. "Give it to me—quick—quick! I am very weak."