"Paresis," Sommers replied shortly. As her face was still inquiring, he added: "Brain trouble. In his case a kind of decay of the tissue; perhaps inherited, certainly hastened by his habits, probably precipitated by the operation." His glance met hers, and they both fell silent before the common thought. In the practice of his profession he had done this for her, in obedience to the cowardly rules of that profession. He had saved life--animation--to this mass of corruption. Except for his skill, this waste being would have gone its way quietly to death, thereby purifying all life by that little. He added at last in a mechanical tone: "That results sometimes from such an operation. You can't tell how it will affect the brain, especially when the history of the case is a bad one. He will have to be sent away to an institution if--; but the only thing now is to wait to see what will happen. Good night. I shall see you in a few days," he concluded abruptly. He was determined to speculate no more, to give her no hopes that might prove groundless. The future was uncertain: the patient might have convulsions, paralysis, locomotor ataxia, mere imbecility with normal physical functions, or intermittent insanity. It was highly unprofessional to speculate in this loose fashion about the outcome of an operation. Mrs. Preston watched him as he crossed the lawn and untied his horse. She had not thanked him for coming, for promising to come again, he reflected with relief. She was no weak, dependent fool. He rode down the sodded lane, and as his horse picked his way carefully toward the avenue where the electric cars were shooting back and forth like magnified fireflies, he turned in his saddle to look once more at the cottage. One light gleamed from the room he had just left. He could see the outline of the woman's form standing by the open window. The place was lonely and forbidding enough, isolated and withdrawn as the life of the woman within it. She was set apart with the thing that had been man stretched out above in stupor, or restlessly babbling over his dirty tale. God knew why! Yet, physician and unsentimental thinker that he was, he felt to a certain degree the inevitableness of her fate. The common thing would be to shake the dirt from one's shoes, to turn one's back on the diseased and mistaken being, "to put it away where it would not trouble,"--but she did not seek to escape. And he had been the instrument to execute for her this decree of fate, to bind it permanently, a lifetime curse.