The beliefs of years, however, or even those habits which so often pass for beliefs, are not to be done away with in a night. Even love cannot completely alter the course of life in a moment. At the last, worn out with the conflict, but with a supreme effort to regain spiritual calm, Maurice flung his whole soul into an agony of supplication, as he might have flung his body at the foot of a cross, and prayed to be delivered from this too great temptation. He would renounce; he would pluck up by the roots this passion which had sprung and grown in his heart; at whatever cost he would tear it up, and be faithful to his high calling. As a child casts itself upon the bosom of its mother, he cast himself upon the Divine, and with an ecstatic sense of pardon, of peace, of perfect joy, he fell asleep at last. Maurice awoke in broad daylight, with a confused sense that the world was falling in fragments about his ears, and that his name was being shouted by the angel of the last trump. He found that the physician who could not be had on the previous night had now been brought to his chamber by Mehitabel. "Here's the saw-bones at last," was the characteristically uncompromising introduction of the woman. "Dr. Murray's come to tell you that all Mis' Morison did last night was wrong, and that probably you'll have to have your arm cut off 'cause of it." Wynne sat up in bed dazed and uncomprehending, but the smile of the doctor brought him to a sense of where he was. The latter was not in the least surprised by Mehitabel's manner of speech. "If you'd had anything to do with it, Mehitabel," was Dr. Murray's comment, "I've no doubt the arm would have had to go; but when Mrs. Morison does a thing, it's another story." "Humph!" sniffed she. "You've got some small amount of sense, if it ain't much. Now, young man, set your teeth together and put out your tongue--your arm, I mean." Maurice smiled, not so much at the humor of the error as at the fact that it was so evidently intentional on the part of the elderly virgin, who cunningly glanced at him and at the doctor to discover if the rare stroke of wit were properly appreciated. "Jocose as ever, Mehitabel," observed the doctor, going to work at once with swift and delicate precision. "You've a nasty cut here, Mr. Wynne; but you're lucky to get off with nothing worse. It's a good deal to come through such an accident without a permanent injury." "That's true," Maurice responded cheerfully. "I dreamed in the night that I was all in bits." "Plenty of poor fellows were. It was the most terrible smash-up for years." "How is Miss Morison?" Wynne asked, wondering if his voice betrayed the inward agitation without which he could not pronounce her name. "Oh, she's all right. Nervous and shaky, of course; but she's a sound, wholesome creature, and it won't take her long to recover her tone."