children were collecting butterflies, and I tightened the cork.

"Oh, yes," she said, a deep and unaccountable relief in her voice, "I see. That odour has the strangest effect on me ever since——" she waited a long time. At last she said she would try to tell me[Pg 6] something, if I would ask her questions to make it easier for her, and never discuss it afterward unless she should invite the discussion.

[Pg 6]

I do not, of course, pretend to tell the story as she told it to me. It was broken by long pauses and many questions on my part. Her phrasing, though wonderfully effective at times, was empty and inadequate at others, when she simply could not say what she meant, neither pen nor tongue being her natural medium of expression. But if the style that I have used is not hers, it best translates, at least, the mood into which she threw me.

The surgeon, who knew her well, took her hand on the threshold of the operating room.

"Even now, dear friend," he said, "we may turn back. You know what I think of this."

"You promised me!" she cried eagerly.[Pg 7] "I have your word that I should not risk this."

[Pg 7]

"You have my word," said he, "that in your present state of mind and under the present conditions you should not risk it. But I am by no means sure that you could not change both your state of mind and the conditions. If you say you cannot, then, indeed, I will not let you risk it. But if you would only say you could! Then I would risk anything. Will you not say it?"

"I cannot say it," she said. "Open the door!"

"Listen!" said the surgeon; "if when you are on the table, if even when the ether is at your lips, you will raise your finger, I will stop it. Will you remember? For you, too, you know, run a risk in doing this."

"I shall remember," she said, "but I shall not raise my finger." And he opened the door.

Her mind was so busy with a rush of[Pg 8] memories and plans, crowded together at will to shut out her fear, that she was unconscious of the little bustle about her, the blunt, crude details of preparation.

[Pg 8]

"Breathe deeply, please," someone said in her ear, "harder, harder still—so!"

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