"Yes, there is generally a baby—when it is necessary there should be one. Though the patients who are treated in the free wards of German and Austrian _Kliniks_ may not always be scrupulous upon this point. Still, if the treatment can be carried out without undue peril for the mother—and I do not allow this for a single moment—have you not considered the risk for the child?" Margot had pulled off one long glove. Now she murmured, setting the tip of a little bare, jewelled finger near the corner of a distracting little mouth: "You consider that it’s handicapping the start for—the kiddie?" The avalanche fell; shocking and freezing and stunning her. "Ask yourself, Lady Norwater, and do not forget to ask your husband: Will a healthy or a degenerate type of man or woman be eventually reared from an infant in whom the springs of Life have been deliberately poisoned with henbane and morphia—before its entrance into the world?" She gasped: "Then it’s all U.P.?" She was slangy even in her tragic misery. She sought in her gold vanity-bag and produced the envelope that held the cheque, but Saxham waved it away. "Pray put that back.... Neither from rich nor poor do I accept unearned money. You have not really consulted me. You have asked my opinion upon a course of treatment. And I have given it, for what it is worth. You will go home, and tell your husband that I have talked tosh, and consult another physician." "No, I won’t!" She said it bravely. "I want you to prescribe!" "If I prescribe," Saxham told her, "you shall certainly fee me. But you do not need treatment." His eyes smiled though his mouth did not relax its grimness, as he added: "You strike me as being in excellent health." She owned to feeling "top-hole," first-class, and simply awfully beany! Though, and her dimple faded as she owned it, the thought of what must happen in November took "the gilt off the gingerbread." "Do not think of what is going to happen in November," Saxham advised her. "Or teach yourself to think of it in the right way." The sense of her childishness and inexperience went home to the sensitive quick beneath the man’s hard exterior, as she said to him with an unconsciously appealing accent: "But how am I to find out what is the right way?" He had gained upon her confidence. The admission proved it. With infinite tact he began to win yet another woman to drain out her chalice of Motherhood, untinctured with the druggist’s nepenthe,—to gain for the race yet another babe unmarred before its birth. For this end no labour was too great for Saxham. A crank you may call him, but that cranks of this type are the leaven of the world, you know.