He flung himself off the couch, and began to pace the room. Speech, once unloosed, flowed freely enough now,--he could not keep it back. "The patient is a man of prominence--the matter of his recovery is a great necessity. If he were able to bear it he ought to be operated upon; but there isn't one chance in a hundred he'd survive an operation at present. There's at least one chance in ten he'll get well without one. I'm usually keen enough to operate, but for once I don't dare risk it. Van Horn advises operation--unreservedly. And the deuce of it is that with every hour that goes by he lets the family understand that he considers the patient's chances for relief by operation are lessening. He's fixing it so that however things come out he's safe, and however things come out I'm in the hole." "Not if the patient gets well." "No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten, at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he." "Would he have liked to operate himself?" Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,--if he would have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice." "Is the patient going down?" "No, he's holding his own fairly well, but the disease isn't one that would take him off overnight. It'll be a matter of two or three days yet, either way. How I'm going to get through them, with things going as they are;--meeting that Judas there at the bedside, three times a day, and trying to keep my infernal temper from making me disgrace myself--" "Red, dear,--" She rose and came to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking straight up into his face. "That's where Dr. Van Horn is stronger than you, and in no other way. He can control himself." "Not inside! Nor outside--if you know him. He's exactly as mad as I am, only--" "He doesn't show it. And so he has the advantage." "Do you think I don't know that? But I'm right and he's wrong--" "So you are the one who should keep cool. You've heard the saying of some wise man--_'If you are right you have no need to lose your temper--if you are wrong you can't afford to.'_"