"I'd do it for you, same as for one of my daughters. It's just as easy as having a tooth out, and you start over as good as new."
"It isn't that," she smiled. "You can't start over as good as new if you are a woman. I couldn't run away. I've put myself into it a second time, without thinking. I chose then just as before, when I followed him to the hospital. When the doctor asked me if he should try to save his life, I wanted him to die—oh, how I longed that the doctor would refuse to try! Well, he's alive. It is for life."
She seemed to see before her a long, toilsome ascent, to which she had been driven to put her feet.
"Think it over," the dentist counselled at last, despondently. "Sleep on it. There's Worcester, Ohio, and my sister-in-law."
Mrs. Preston smiled, and put on her hat.
"I've taken a lot of your time."
"That's no account, but I can't see what you came for. You won't let a feller help you."
"There wasn't any good reason. I came because I was awfully lonely. There isn't a soul that I can speak out to, except you. You don't know what that means. I go about in the schoolroom, and up and down the streets, and see things—horrible things. The world gets to be one big torture chamber, and then I have to cry out. I come to you to cry out,—because you really care. Now I can go away, and keep silent for a long time."
"You make too much of it," the dentist protested. He busied himself in putting the little steel instruments into their purple plush beds and locking the drawers.
"Yes, I make too much of it," Mrs. Preston acknowledged quietly, as she opened the door. "Good night."