“But think of it, my dear friend,” she argued, “just think of it. You are saved--saved by a miracle. The doctor says you will be stronger than you have ever been before.” “All the more dreadful will it be,” said I. “I had finished with life. I had got through with it. I don't want a second lifetime. One is quite enough for any sane human being. Why on earth couldn't they have let me die?” Lola passed her cool hand over my forehead. “You mustn't talk like that--Simon,” she said, in her deepest and most caressing voice, using my name somewhat hesitatingly, for the first time. “You mustn't. A miracle really has been performed. You've been raised from the dead--like the man in the Gospel----” “Yes,” said I petulantly, “Lazarus. And does the Gospel tell us what Lazarus really thought of the unwarrantable interference with his plans? Of course he had to be polite--” “Oh, don't!” cried, Lola, shocked. In a queer unenlightened way, she was a religious woman. “I'm sorry,” said I, feeling ashamed of myself. “If you knew how I have prayed God to make you well,” she said. “If I could have died for you, I would--gladly--gladly----” “But I wanted to die, my dear Lola,” I insisted, with the egotism of the sick. “I object to this resuscitation. I say it is monstrous that I should have to start a second lifetime at my age. It's all very well when you begin at the age of half a minute--but when you begin at eight-and-thirty years----” “You have all the wisdom of eight-and-thirty years to start with.” “There is only one thing more disastrous to a man than the wisdom of thirty-eight years,” I declared with mulish inconvincibility, “and that is the wisdom he may accumulate after that age.” She sighed and abandoned the argument. “We are going to make you well in spite of yourself,” she said. They, namely, the doctor, the nurse, and Lola, have done their best, and they have succeeded. But their task has been a hard one. The patient's will to live is always a great factor in his recovery. My disgust at having to live has impeded my convalescence, and I fully believe that it is only Lola's tears and the doctor's frenzied appeals to me not to destroy the one chance of his life of establishing a brilliant professional reputation that have made me consent to face existence again. As for the doctor, he was pathetically insistent. “But you must get well!” he gesticulated. “I am going to publish it, your operation. It will make my fortune. I shall at last be able to leave this hole of an Algiers and go to Paris! You don't know what I've done for you! I've performed an operation on you that has never been performed successfully before. I thought it had been done, but I found out afterwards my English _confreres_ were right. It hasn't. I've worked a miracle in surgery, and by my publication will make you as the subject of it famous for ever. And here you are trying to die and ruin everything. I ask you--have you no human feelings left?”