"Dr. Abbott says there is no reason why she should not if we can turn her from her determination to die." Always Dan had been intensely in love with life. He had a strong, full-blooded young man's horror of death. He could think of it only as a fitting close to a long, useful life, or as a possible release from months of sickness and pain. That anyone young, and in good health, with the world of beauty and years of usefulness before them, with the opportunities and duties of life calling, should willfully seek to die, was a monstrous thought. After all the boy knew so little. He was only beginning to sense vaguely the great forces that make and mar humankind. At the calm words of the nurse he turned quickly toward the bed with a shudder. "Her determination to die!" he repeated in an awed whisper. Miss Farwell was watching him curiously. He whispered half to himself, wonderingly, "Why should she wish to die?" "Why should she wish to live?" The nurse's cold tones startled him. He turned to her perplexed, wondering, speechless. "I--I--do not understand," he said at last. "I don't suppose you do," she answered grimly. "How could you? Your ministry is a matter of schools and theories, of doctrines and beliefs. This is a matter of life." "My church--" he began, remembering his sermon. But she interrupted him, "Your church does not understand, either; it is so busy earning money to pay its ministers that it has no time for such things as this." "But they do not know," he faltered. "I did not dream that such a thing as this could be." He looked about the room and then at the still form on the bed, with a shudder. "You a minister of Christ's gospel and ignorant of these things? And yet this is not an uncommon case, sir. I could tell you of many similar cases that have come under my own observation, though not all of them have chosen to die. This girl could have made a living; I suppose you understand. But she is a good girl; so there was nothing for her but this. All she asked was a chance--only a chance." The minister was silent. He could not answer.