He looked at her as if he approved and admired her directness. And he told her. I shall never forget the way her face turned ashen white as she listened; she seemed, too, in that short space of minutes, to grow years older.... He had made a careful examination of her husband, he began. It was a most complicated case, and he wouldn't use any technical language; but, to be perfectly candid, the matter was altogether different from what he had been led to expect. "You see, Mrs. Severn, how it is? Your husband's trouble is not what I thought—is not what he thought, either."
"It is more serious?" she said, still calmly.
"Oh, no. Not exactly more serious. Just different."
"Well?"
He coughed and cleared his throat. "The operation—if there was to have been one at all—ought to have been performed immediately after the accident. That is my opinion."
She bore it well, though she didn't—for the moment—realize all that his words implied.
"But still," she whispered, "even now...."
"Now, I am vurry sorry to say, is too late."
"Too late! Too late?" She was realizing a little—just a little. "You mean that you're not even going to try?"
"To try, Mrs. Severn, when there is no chance at all, would be plain murder."