"And yet he may live for years just as he is now," the doctor said. "But we must not give up trying to help him because he can never be any better. I must devise some sort of relief. It will not do to let him sit there, like that, all day, day after day--maybe for years. I tried this morning to find out what he was thinking about. I also tried to learn from Anne what his tastes were, what sort of things he had liked or was interested in before he met with the accident. His sight is much impaired, and he seems never to have been anything of a reader. I doubt whether he ever had any indoor interests, except playing cards. All that I can remember is that he used to gamble like the very devil." "Shame on you, John, to be raking up that against the poor fellow, as he is now," protested the doctor's wife, indignantly. "Nonsense! Who's raking anything up?" the doctor responded. "I was merely trying to think of some way of diverting his mind. I thought perhaps a game of cards--" The doctor's wife uttered a smothered little shriek: "John _Alexander_! What are you thinking of to speak of card-playing in Anne Watson's house?" The doctor grew calmly judicial, as all good husbands grow when their wives become unduly excited. "I am well aware of Anne's prejudice. I know precisely how strong--" "Strong!" repeated his wife, interrupting him. "It's the strongest thing--the only really strong thing--_in_ Anne--that, and her religion. Her horror of card-playing is a part of her religion. It's bred in her bone. She got it from her father, the elder. Some people thought he was actually out of his head about cards. And Anne believes as firmly as he believed it, that cards are Satan's chief weapon, and that even to touch them is to imperil the soul. She believes it as firmly as she believes in baptism for the remission of sins; as firmly as she believes that there is a heaven and a hell." All this breathless outpouring the doctor waved aside: "As I have already said, my dear, I know perfectly well what Anne's feeling used to be. Now, however, in Tom's hopeless condition she will, of course, look at the matter with more reason." "Now _isn't_ that like a man?" appealed Mrs. Alexander, to no one in particular, since she could hardly appeal to her visitor against his own sex. "Wouldn't anybody but a man know that Anne would only stand the firmer for that very reason? Any woman would see in a moment that the very fact of Anne's knowing that her husband's mortal life was hopelessly wrecked, could not fail to increase her resistance against a thing which she believes must lose him the life everlasting."