“There are more agnostics than you know of,” I said. “In this country, where religious questions are rarely asked and more rarely answered, no census of them could ever be taken. You probably not only know but esteem and trust scores of them.” To this she made no verbal reply, but settled down steadily to sob. “My dear Mrs. Stratton,” I said. “You are taking the gloomiest view without the faintest reason. You might just as well look on the case brightly.” “Yes, yes,” said George, who had gone to his wife’s side and was stroking her with reassuring movements. “You!” she said. “You’re always siding against me! Come away. It is no use staying here or talking any more. Such selfishness I never saw in all my life. But no good will come of it, I feel that. My poor little Rose, my poor little Rose!” She returned to look at me with an intense yearning in her exceedingly damp features. “I will not decide to-night,” I said. “I shall pray that you may have the best guidance,” she assured me. I thanked her. “You shall know in the morning, early,” I said, “how your prayers have been answered”; and she stumbled away, blind with tears. George followed her, pausing only for a moment to inflict upon me one of those grasps in which man assures man of understanding and allegiance, and re-states the solidarity of sex. It hurt horribly, and I nursed my hand for some moments; but it was comforting too. It was late when I went to bed, for there was much to do and plan. I was not too happy about the future and my new responsibilities, but one thought as I turned out the gas gave me the purest joy—and that was that I was not George Stratton. * * * * * Allinson had asked a great deal. It meant a kind of bondage for thirteen years—and the years between thirty-four, my present age, and forty-seven ought to be good ones. Should a young man dedicate them to a child not his own? Ordinarily a young man would not, but my case was not quite ordinary. A doctor automatically surrenders to his profession much of his youthfulness. Some one has said that the roystering medical student must be forgiven all when it is remembered how suddenly and completely he has, on qualification, to be changed into a staid, sober and punctual servant of the public for the rest of his days—yes, and his nights. And I had always been a little old-fashioned, as we say, and the circumstance of succeeding to so big a practice so early, and being accepted favourably by so many of my father’s patients, had not impaired this characteristic. I was therefore both by nature and by profession more of a predestined guardian of another man’s child than most men even of forty-four are.