The Onlooker asked the first needful questions automatically. To himself he was saying: "The situation is dramatically good; but I don't see how to develop the action. It really is rather amusing that I--_I_ should have to tap his beastly chest, and listen to his cursed lungs, and ask sympathetic questions about his idiotic infant illnesses--one thing, he ought to be able to remember those pretty vividly--the confounded pup." The Onlooker had never done anything wronger than you have done, my good reader, and he never expected to meet a giant temptation, any more than you do. A man may go all his days and never meet Apollyon. On the other hand, Apollyon may be waiting for one round the corner of the next street. The devil was waiting for the Onlooker in the answers to his careless questions--"Father alive? No? What did he die of?" For the answer was "Heart," and in it the devil rose and showed the Onlooker the really only true and artistic way to develop the action in this situation, so dramatic in its possibilities. The illuminative flash of temptation was so sudden, so brilliant, that the Doctor-Onlooker closed his soul's eyes and yielded without even the least pretence of resistance. He took his stethoscope from the table, and he felt as though he had picked up a knife to stab the other man in the back. As, in fact, he had. Ten minutes later, the stabbed man was reeling from the Onlooker's consulting room. Mind and soul reeled, that is, but his body was stiffer and straighter than usual. He walked with more than his ordinary firmness of gait, as a man does who is just drunk enough to know that he must try to look sober. He walked down the street, certain words ringing in his ears--"Heart affected--probably hereditary weakness. No office in the world would insure you." And so it was all over--the dreams, the hopes, the palpitating faith in a beautiful future. His days might be long, they might be brief; but be his life long or short, he must live it alone. He had a little fight with himself as he went down Wimpole Street; then he hailed a hansom, and went and told her father, who quite agreed with him that it was all over. The father wondered at himself for being more sorry than glad. Then the Lover went and told the Girl. He had told the father first to insure himself against any chance of yielding to what he knew the Girl would say. She said it, of course, with her dear arms round his neck. "I won't give you up just because you're ill," she said; "why, you want me more than ever!" "But I may die at any moment." "So may I! And you may live to be a hundred--I'll take my chance. Oh, don't you see, too, that if there _is_ only a little time we ought to spend it together?" "It's impossible," he said, "it's no good. I must set my teeth and bear it. And you--I hope it won't be as hard for you as it will for me." "But you _can't_ give me up if I won't _be_ given up, can you?"