"Meantime you must protect yourself. The least harm his outbreaks will do will be to make a scandal, to make it necessary for you to leave your school." "What can I do?" she asked, almost irritably. "There are institutions." "I have no money." "And I suppose they would not do, now, while he is apparently getting better. They would not help him, even if we should get him confined. His is one of those cases where the common law prescribes liberty." There was nothing further to say in this direction. Sommers seemed to be thinking. At last, with an impulsive motion, he exclaimed: "It should not have been! No, it should not have been." He paused. Her eyes had lowered from his face. She knew his unexpressed thought. "And more than that, if you and I and the world thought straight, he _would not be here now_." "No, I suppose not," she acquiesced quietly, following his thought word by word. "Well, as it is, I guess it's for life--for _my_ life, at least." "If one could only love enough--" he mused. "Love!" she exclaimed passionately, at this blasphemous intrusion. "Does one love such as that,--the man who betrayed your youth?" "Not you and I. But one who could love enough--" Her disdainful smile stopped him. "I followed him to the hospital. I took him here, I don't know why. I guess it's my fate. He was once mine, and I can't escape that--but as to love--do you think I am as low as that?" "You have no duties except the duties love makes," the doctor suggested. "He is no longer even the man you married. He is not a man in any sense of the word. He is merely a failure, a mistake; and if society is afraid to rid itself of him, society must provide for him." "Yes, yes," she murmured, as if all this were familiar ground to her mind. "But I am the nearest member of society--the one whose business it is to attend to this mistake. It's my contribution," she ended with a feeble smile. "Society has no right to expect too much from any one. The whole sacrifice mustn't fall where it crushes. I say that such a case should be treated by the public authorities, and should be treated once for all." She rose and looked into his eyes, as if to say, 'You _were_ society, and you did not dare.' In a moment she turned away, and said, "Don't you believe in a soul?" "Yes," he smiled back. "And that poor soul and others like it, many, many thousands, who cannot grow, should be at rest--one long rest; to let other souls grow, unblasted by their foul touch." "I have thought so," she replied calmly, taking his belief as an equal. "To let joy into the world somewhere before death." Her wistful tone rang out into the room. "But that would be murder," she continued. "We should have to call it murder, shouldn't we? And that is a fearful word. I could never quite forget it. I should always ask myself if I were right, if I had the right to judge. I am a coward. The work is too much for me."