“To the one who might die!” Sara said impetuously.
She got up to go, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes; the young man rose, too, and stood leaning back against his office table, his hands in his pockets, and a good-natured smile on his lean, strong face. “I don’t see,” his visitor went on, “how you dare to say any soul is incurably bad”—
“I only said the probability was that your Nellie was incurable; and, after all, if you have only a certain amount of medicine, will you give it to the moribund or the person who is just coming down with an illness?”
“I don’t think the illustration is good,” Sara answered loftily; “we are speaking of souls. And we have no right to say we know the limit”—her voice fell a little—“of God’s power.”
Dr. Morse looked as though he were about to speak, but apparently thought better of it.
“I’m very sorry for your poor woman,” Sara said, “and I’ll try to see if I can’t arrange a little rest for her; but first of all, life must be saved.”
Then she went away, her lip between her white teeth, and her breath quick. “Horrible man!” she said to herself, “the idea of reasoning about a thing like that—a human life! Dreadful person! I hope I shall never see him again.”
Dr. Morse, in his office, thrust his hands down into his pockets, and stretched his feet out, and reflected. “I suppose she thinks I’m a brute. I might have known better than to talk to a sentimental girl as though she were a rational being. She’ll keep that creature alive long enough to bring two or three fellows down to the gutter, and, possibly, even continue her physical and moral characteristics in a child (though that’s not likely, thank heaven), and then feel that she’s done her duty! Good Lord, the harm these philanthropists do!”
Nevertheless he softened a little when a short and formal note came from Miss Wharton, with a small sum of money for “the case of which he had spoken.”
“She’s got a good heart, that girl,” he told himself. “Her ten dollars won’t do much, though; and to think of that little squalid Nellie Sherman having a hundred spent to keep her worthless body alive!”