“It is doubly my fault, doctor, I see it all now. When Dorothy was a child I _would_ not face the fact. It was too awful to think my child would be as I still was. So we had many little fictions that both nurse and mother saw through: the child was poorly, was teething still, was overdone. The same thing, only more so, went on during her schoolroom life. Dorothy was delicate, wanted stamina, must have a tonic. And this, though we had a governess who tried to convince me that it was temper and not delicacy that ailed my little girl. The worst of deceiving yourself is that you get to believe the lie. I saw much less of the schoolroom than of the nursery party, and firmly believed in Dorothy’s frequent attacks of indisposition.” “But, supposing you had faced the truth, what would you have done?” “There is my excuse; I had no idea that anything could be done.” “Now, please, don’t write me down a pagan if I try to show you what might have been done, and may yet be done.” “Doctor Evans!” “Oh, yes, ’tis a fact; you good women are convinced that the setting of a broken limb is a work for human skill, but that the cure of a fault of disposition is for Providence alone to effect, and you say your prayers and do nothing, looking down from great heights upon us who believe that skill and knowledge come in here too, and are meant to do so in the divine scheme of things. It’s startling when you come to think of it, that every pair of parents have the absolute _making_ of their child!” “But what of _inherited_ failings--such cases as this of ours?” “Precisely a case in point. Don’t you see, such a case is just a problem set before parents with a, ‘See, how will you work out this so as to pass your family on free from taint?’” “That’s a noble thought of yours, Evans. It gives every parent a share in working out the salvation of the world, even to thousands of generations. Come, Mary, we’re on our promotion! To pass on our children free from the blemishes they get from us is a thing worth living for.” “Indeed it is. But don’t think me narrow-minded, doctor, nor that I should presume to think hard things of you men of science, if I confess that I still think the ills of the flesh fall within the province of man, but the evils of the spirit within the province of God.”