"Because you are the one man in all the world who can help me. You can keep me from death, or if I die you can do the thing you did before!" She made the first movement she had made since she had sunk into her chair as she raised her hand and pointed to the gleaming brass, the bright glass, and the coiled wires of his apparatus, which stood there on the table. He had known always that this moment was to come to him, had known what his answer was to be, and he shook his head in refusal. "You must! That you must swear. I cannot die! Not now! You know that! You must not let me die! You owe me that, at least!" She had lost her composure, her breath came in fitful, uneven gasps, and as she sat there she pressed one hand over her heart. "Wait!" He spoke quickly. "You must answer me some questions." "Well." "You, my daughter, your mother's daughter, left my house with a married man?" "Yes." "You robbed me; you were willing that a good, loyal girl, who worshipped you, should suffer in your place. You broke the heart of a young man who loved you?" "Yes. I did those things." "Do you feel sorrow for them?" "No." "Do you feel shame for what you did then or for all the things you have done since then?" "No!" "You did them because they suited your mood? What you wanted you took; the thing you felt that you wanted to do you did?" "Yes." "Without a regret? Without one single backward thought of us?" "Why should I think of you?" she asked scornfully. "What did you mean in my life, any of you, after I once put you all behind me? Does one think again of the food that nourished him yesterday, or of the sun that kept him warm? I was born into this world like any other thing that breathes, to live if I was strong, to die if I was weak. I did not ask for life, but when it came, why should I not get all of its brightness if I could? Why should I think of anyone's pleasures or pains but my own? What is the world to me but the place in which I am to live my own life, in my own way, and for my own good?" "You need not go on," he said quietly. "You have told me all that I wished to know." "But you have not given me the promise I came here to get." As she spoke she rose unsteadily from her chair, clinging for support to the back of it and looking at him with a fierce questioning in her eyes. "Will you stay by me until my heart fails?" "I will." "Will you do your best to save me?" "I will." "And if you fail?" At her question her voice rose shrilly, almost to a scream. "If I die, as they said that I must--what will you do then? Answer! Answer! Will you bring my life back to me? Will you?" He would not answer; for a moment she looked at him, her face frozen into lines of awful terror; then screaming, panting, she staggered to the door, and opening it she called wildly: "John! Doctor! Come! Come!"