Numerous sharp questions were required before he finally came upon the trail of the truth. She had delayed saying that Wilder had not eaten with her, and that toward the last he was niggardly with the food, because she feared that it would sound like a reproach. The moment she mentioned it, Dr. Mal-bone was transfigured. He sprang back from the bedside and confronted her, menacing and formidable, as Wilder had confronted her on that terrible day when she told him the story of her breaking up the attachment between a musician and her friend, and the death of the girl from a broken heart. What had she done or said that should bring this second storm of a man’s fury upon her? “And you no doubt think,” cried Dr. Malbone, “that you have learned from his letter the true reason for his keeping you out of the cave. In all this broad world is there any human being so besotted with selfishness as not to be able to burrow through its swinishness for the truth? Come and look at this.” He dragged her to the bedside and showed her the body of his patient. “Is there under heaven,” he continued, “a mental or a spiritual eye so blinded with brutal egotism, so drunk with self-interest, as not to read the story that this poor withered frame writes large? Do you not understand that in those acts--over which you no doubt whined and complained in your empty heart--he gave evidence of a sublime sacrifice for you? Look at your own abundant flesh. You never went hungry in the hut. You never asked yourself if he might have food sufficient for two during the long winter. And now you see that he has denied himself for your comfort. He is dying of starvation, because in his splendid unselfishness he wanted you to be comfortable.” Dr. Malbone paused, but his eyes were still blazing upon her, and his body trembled with the passion that stirred him. “One affliction has fallen upon you; may you have strength and grace to bear it; but I say this: If ten thousand such afflictions had overtaken you, the suffering from them would not be adequate----” He suddenly checked himself, and gave his wife hurried instructions for the preparation of some nutriment. While this was preparing, he resorted to such vigorous measures as the urgency of the case demanded. All this quickly brought him under self-control, and he worked with the sure hand of a skilful man battling with all his might in a desperate emergency. The young woman had sunk into a chair, where she sat dazed, weak, ill, and ignored, not daring to offer help, and praying dumbly for the opening of a vast gulf to entomb her.