"As I told you, an old friend of my father's helped me to get work. That kept me from ending it just there. As the months went on and he did not try to find me, I got used to the round, to the school, the living on, dead and alive. I thought of getting a divorce, of finding some country school in another state. Dr. Leonard urged me to. I might have--I don't know. But accidentally _he_ was brought back. I was going home from a teachers' meeting that night. I saw him lying on the pavement, thrown out of the saloon, as he told you. A crowd gathered. He was unconscious. I wanted to run away, to leave him, to escape. He groaned. I couldn't--I couldn't." She sighed wearily at the memory of her illogical act. The doctor nodded sympathetically. It was a fatal moment, the point of decision in her life. He understood what it meant to her. "There was no one else to take him--to be responsible. He had been mine. After all, the divorce would have made no difference; it never can. You have to take your failures; you have to endure." "Has he any relatives?" Sommers asked. "A few; they were done with him long ago. They had money, and they wanted to get rid of him. They put him into a business that would keep him away from them; that would give him the best chance to kill himself--going about everywhere, always travelling, always with men who drink and live in hotels as he has. They shoved him into the world to let the world, or any one who would, take care of him." It had been her lot, because of the error of her incompetent heart, to take charge of this flotsam. That was so evident that she had given up seeking for escape. "He is helpless now," she added, as for excuse. "It would be cruel." For a moment the doctor's face looked hard. Was it, he seemed to be turning over in his mind, that she loved him a little in the depths of her heart? That was an irritating trait of feminine stupidity. But one intelligent glance at her calm face rendered that supposition impossible. She was merely largely human, with a sense of remote claims. "And now what will you do?" he asked. Her eyes were brooding on that now. Finally she exclaimed with an impatient gesture: "How can I tell! He may get strong enough to leave me--in peace. He may come back again to rest and get well. And that may go on and on until one of us dies, or I am discharged. As I told you, they are trying now to exclude married teachers from the schools. And I am married!" Sommers saw that she had faced the sordid situation; that she expected no relief from the clouds. He got up and looked at his watch. "I shall come again. We will see what can be done." This was a convention of the profession. Nothing could be done for that man, and he knew it. She knew it also. She smiled mournfully as they shook hands. Yet as he moved toward the door she asked in a low tone: "Won't you tell me what you call it? There is no use in not telling me."