to "cut it out," as he would have expressed it to himself. 

 "I do want to—now. I didn't mean to. But it's a relief."  And it came to him sharply that if he was to be a surgeon of souls, what business had he to shrink from blood? 

 "I am here to relieve you if I can. It's what I most wish to do—for any one," he said gently then. And the girl suddenly laughed again. 

 "For any one," she repeated.  "I like it that way."  Her eyes, wandering a moment about the dim, bare office, rested on a calendar in huge lettering hanging on the wall, rested on the figures of the date of the day.  "I want to be just a number, a date—August first—I'm that, and that's all. I'll never see you again, I hope. But you are good and I'll be grateful. Here's the way things are. Three years ago I got engaged to a man. I suppose I thought I cared about him. I'm a fool. I get—fads."  A short, soft laugh cut the words.  "I got about that over the man. He fascinated me. I thought it was—more. So I got engaged to him. He was a lot of things he oughtn't to be; my people objected. Then, later, my father was ill—dying. He asked me to break it off, and I did—he'd been father and mother both to me, you see. But I still thought I cared. I hadn't seen the man much. My father died, and then I heard about the man, that he had lost money and been ill and that everybody was down on him; he drank, you know, and got into trouble. So I just felt desperate; I felt it was my fault, and that there was nobody to stand by him. I felt as if I could pull him up and make his life over—pretty conceited of me, I expect—but I felt that. So I wrote him a letter, six months ago, out of a blue sky, and told him that if he wanted me still he could have me. And he did. And then I went out to live with my uncle, and this man lives in that town too, and I've seen him ever since, all the time. I know him now. And—"  Out of the dimness the clergyman felt, rather than saw, a smile widen—child-like, sardonic—a curious, contagious smile, which bewildered him, almost made him smile back.  "You'll think me a pitiful person," she went on, "and I am. But I—almost—hate him. I've promised to marry him and I can't bear to have his fingers touch me." 

 In Geoffrey McBirney's short experience there had been nothing which threw a light on what he should do with a situation of this sort. He was keenly uncomfortable; he wished the rector had stayed at home. At all events, silence was safe, so he was silent with all his might. 

 "When the doctors told me about my malady a 

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