"You've proved the wisdom of your change, Brenton," he remarked, one day. "How is that?" "The whole look of you. You aren't the same man you were, five months ago. Mentally and physically, you're sleeker." Brenton laughed. "Is that a sign of wisdom?" The doctor met the question with composure. "As a general thing, yes. The normal being is sleek by nature. It's only when he cramps himself that he gets wrinkled. Cramps himself, I say. Cramping from an outside source never has much effect upon him, unless he chooses to have it. No; that's not Christian Science; it's mere common sense. As a rule, the two things are incompatible. By the way, I hear that your ex-curate has been tackling your wife." "No!" "A fact. The boy told me. She started out to tackle him, and he clinched with her. I must say it was plucky of him, even if it didn't appear to do much good." Brenton's gray eyes clouded. "The only question is: what is good," he said thoughtfully. "No question about it," the doctor blustered. "The only chance the idiot woman has--" Brenton interrupted. "She is my wife," he reminded the doctor. "I don't care if she is your wife, twenty times over," Doctor Keltridge said vehemently. "We both know the infernal thing that she has done." "But, if she believed it was right--" Brenton was beginning faintly. The doctor bore him down. "Because she is a semi-maniac, she's not to be encouraged in her destruction of the human race," he argued hotly. Then, as he saw the tightening and the whitening of Brenton's lips, he forgot his argument in swift contrition. "Damn it all, Brenton! I vowed I'd never mention the thing to you again, as long as I lived, and here I am again, off on the same old subject. I'm a garrulous old man; but----" his keen face softened, puckered into a score of wrinkles; "but I loved that baby boy. I brought him into the world, and I had spent no small amount of time congratulating myself upon the fact that you'd got him, at any rate; that you'd have him for a comforting little peg to hang your spiritual hat on, when you came home from preaching the gospel to a disgruntled and disgruntling world. Almost I think I felt his death more than--" "Not more than I." Brenton faced him steadily. "Not in one sense. And yet, I did feel it more, because, from the first, I saw how needless it would be." But Brenton lifted up his hand. "It's over now," he said concisely. "Why talk about it? Some memories are best off, left to perish." And, in all truth, this was one of them. Now and then, it would stir in its grave, and lift up its ugly head for recognition; but, as a rule, the two men had done their best to heap the dust of time and forgetfulness upon its grave. And yet, certain scenes are so hideous that one never quite forgets them. It had been ordained for Brenton that the passing of his baby son should be followed by such a scene, by a discovery so tragic as to make the painless baby death sink into insignificance beside it.