Laura said she didn't think that Owen ever had considered consequences. "But he _must_ consider them. What's a set of verses compared with his health?" Laura answered quietly, "Owen would say what was his health compared with a set of verses? If he knew they'd be the greatest poem of his life." "His life? My dear child----" The pause was terrible. "I wish," he said, "we could get him out of this." "He doesn't want to go. You said yourself it wasn't the great thing." He admitted it. The great thing, he reiterated, was rest. It was his one chance. He explained carefully again how good a chance it was. He dwelt on the things Prothero might yet do if he gave himself a chance. And when he had done talking Laura remarked that it was all very well, but he was reckoning without Owen's genius. "Genius?" He shrugged his shoulders. He smiled (as if they weren't always reckoning with it at Putney!). "What is it? For medicine it's simply and solely an abnormal activity of the brain. And it must stop." He stood over her impressively, marking his words with clenched fist on open palm. "He must choose between his genius and his life." She winced. "I don't believe he _can_ choose," she murmured. "It _is_ his life." He straightened himself to his enormous height, in dignified recoil from her contradiction. "I have known many men of genius," he said. "His genius is different," said she. He hadn't the heart to say what he had always said, that Prothero's genius was and always had been most peculiarly a disease; but he did not shrink from telling her that at the present crisis it was death. For he was angry now. He could not help being moved by professional animus, the fury of a man who has brought his difficult, dangerous work to the pitch of unexpected triumph, and sees it taken from his hands and destroyed for a perversity, an incomprehensible caprice. He was still more deeply stirred by his compassion, his affection for the Protheros. Secretly, he was very fond of Owen, though the poet _was_ impossible; he was even more fond of little Laura. He did not want to see her made a widow because Prothero refused to control his vice. For the literary habit, indulged in to that extent, amounted to a vice. The Doctor had no patience with it. A man was not, after all, a slave to his unwholesome inspiration (it had dawned on him by this time that Prothero had made a joke about it). Prothero could stop it if he liked. "I've told him plainly," he said, "that what it means to him is death. If you want to keep him, you must stop it." "How can I?" she moaned. "Don't encourage him. Don't let him talk about it. Don't let his mind dwell on it. Turn the conversation. Take his pens and paper from him and don't let him see them again till he is well." When the Doctor left her she went up-stairs to Owen. He was still sitting up writing, dashing down lines with a speed that told her what race he ran. "Owen," she said, "you know. He told you----"