"Yes. He has a way with women, as they say; he manages them by the ears. At least--I mean--" The curate, confounded by the hideous mental picture that he had evoked, was floundering helplessly. "Exactly," Olive assented once more. The curate rallied. "And yet, they all adore him," he concluded. "That is the strange thing about Mr. Brenton, Miss Keltridge. He manages most women grandly," the curate, sure that he had retrieved his error, in his self-gratulation promptly slipped into a second one; "but that suffragette wife of his--" "Mrs. Brenton is not a suffragette," Olive interposed hurriedly. "No? Well, she might as well be. She's Christian Scientist, and that is only the next thing to it. Besides, she is terribly masterful, is Mrs. Brenton. Take the case of the baby, for instance: no matter what happens to be the trouble with the little one, Mrs. Brenton won't allow a grain of calomel inside the house. I call it--" "Olive!" It was the voice of the doctor, speaking from the threshold; and the voice was weighted with anxiety. "Can you be excused for just one minute?" With a little gesture of apology, Olive left her place beside the tray, and went in the direction of the voice. She overtook her father in his consulting-room, where he was pacing the floor, fists in his pockets, hair awry and his face singularly dark and haggard. "Olive," he said abruptly, as his daughter came in sight; "can you possibly send off that snippet, and go down to the Opdykes' for an hour?" "I suppose I can. Is anything the matter?" "Yes, and no. There's nothing new, exactly; but they all are--getting on their nerves. I've been down there, half the afternoon, trying to steady them; but it is a case where they need a woman. If you can go, Olive? And don't come back, until you can't do another thing for any of them. No matter if it does take it out of you; I can patch you up again, all right. And they all want you. Mrs. Opdyke asked if you would come." The doctor came to a full halt, his face very red, his eyes suffused, and fell to rubbing both hands through and through his hair. Olive waited a full minute before she spoke. When she did speak, her clear young voice was steady and authoritative. "Father, what is it? Something must be very wrong. Is Reed--worse?" "No." "Then what is it?" The doctor's face grew redder still. Then, of a sudden, the words flew from him in a great gulp of woe. "He told me, early this afternoon, what he claims to have known surely for a long, long time: that there is no chance for him to gain; that the lower part of his body is absolutely dead; that all our treatment, all our experimenting on it has not affected it at all; that, till the day he dies, he's bound to stay there just as you see him now, half of him perfectly well, half of him a senseless log." Olive whitened, whitened. There came a faint blue line about her mouth, and her eyes glittered, hot and dry. Nevertheless,-- "You believe it?" she asked steadily.