"I know I should ask pardon for my brusqueness, but I am your physician, and I desire to see you well again. The only way that can be accomplished is for you to take the case in your own hands."
"I don't understand, Doctor."
"I take a sincere interest in you and your husband. If you will let me talk to you as a friend, and will take my advice, I hope I may do you much good; but if I am to remain the physician and must confine myself to writing prescriptions for worthless drugs, I fear the improvement will be slow."
"Go on, Doctor. I promise to listen," said Marion, prompted more by a curiosity to hear his advice than by a resolution to follow it.
"I may say some very plain things. Will you promise to take them in the friendly way in which they are meant?"
"Go on, Doctor. I shall not get angry, I promise you."
The Doctor leaned forward and said, in a more sympathetic manner: "Mrs. Sanderson, every physician whose patients are drawn from the classes we call society has to deal with scores of cases precisely like yours. One of us will administer bromides; another will feed his patients on extract of beef; another will use electricity; another will recommend massage, and so on. But all these remedies are fruitless except in so far as they assist the sufferer to believe that she is improving, or afford some temporary relief. The disease, if so I may term a depressed state of the nervous system, is caused by the habits of the patient, and can only be cured by changing those habits."
"I am not dissipated," said Marion somewhat resentfully.
"I did not say that, Mrs. Sanderson, but if you desire to get well you must completely change your mode of life."
"What must I do?"