"She was here—twenty-seven years ago—with André—he showed me the tree—"
"Marcia, calm yourself. Tell me, if you can, just what you mean."
I struggled to regain my self-control, and when I could speak without sobbing, I explained in a few words my reason for thinking my mother was here long years before me with the man who was my father.
The Doctor listened intently.
"This makes the past clearer to me, Marcia, but at the same time it complicates the present, the future—"
"Oh, don't let's talk about past or future!" I cried, nervously irritated by this constant reappearance of new combinations of my past in my present, and possible future. "Let me enjoy what is given me to enjoy now—it is so much!"
"I must see my way, Marcia. A duty remains a duty, even if the doing of it be postponed. I am your friend. I cannot let you wreck your life—-"
"Wreck my life? What do you mean?" I demanded sharply. "How can I wreck it when for the first time I am in a safe harbor?"
He could not, or would not, answer me directly.
"Marcia, many a time when I have an operation to perform, the issue of which seems to me to be a clear one of death, I grow faint-hearted and say to myself: 'I will let the trouble take its natural course—it is death in the end, and, at least, not under my knife.' Then I get a grip on myself; look my duty squarely in the face—and do the best that lies in my trained hand, in my keen sight, in my knowledge of this frail body in which we dwell for a time. And sometimes it happens, that, instead of the issue death, of which I felt certain, there is life as the desired outcome—and I rejoice. I asked an old soldier once, a veteran of the Civil War, a three years man,—he is still living and now a minister of God's word,—how he felt in battle? Could he describe his feelings to me?