"I shall come as often and as long as you need me," Sommers answered, taking her hand kindly. "He has had another attack," he continued. "Mrs. Ducharme told me--I sent her out--and I suppose he's sleeping off the opiate." "Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet." She uttered these words jerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just left the schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He was kind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There was scandal about it now. And yesterday I heard a child, one of my pupils, say to his companion, 'She's the teacher who's got a drunken husband.'" Her voice was dreary, not rebellious. "I don't know what to do. I cannot move. It would be worse in any other neighborhood. I thought," she added in a low voice, "that he would go away, for a time at least, but his mind is so weak, and he has some trouble with walking. But he gets stronger, stronger, O God, every day! I have to see him grow stronger, and I grow weaker." "It is simply preposterous," the doctor protested in matter-of-fact tones, "to kill yourself, to put yourself in such a position for a man, who is no longer a man. For a man you cannot love," he added. "What would be the use of running away from the trouble? He has ruined my life. Alves Preston is a mere thing that eats and sleeps. She will be that kind of thing as long as she lives." "That is romantic rot," the doctor observed coldly. "No life is ruined in that way. One life has been wrecked; but you, _you_ are bigger than that life. You can recover--bury it away--and love and have children and find that it is a good thing to live. That is the beauty of human weakness--we forget ourselves of yesterday." In answer to his words her face, which he had once thought too immobile and passive for beauty, flamed with color, the dark eyes flashing beneath the broad white brow. "Am I just caught in a fog?" she murmured. "You are living in a way that would make any woman mad. I might twist myself into as many knots as you have. I might say that _I_ had caused this disaster; that March evening my hand was too true. For I knew then the man ought to die." He blurted out his admission roughly. "I knew you did," she said softly, "and that has made it easier." His voice trembled when he spoke again. "But I live with facts, not fancies. And the facts are that that ruined thing should not clog you, ruin _you_. Get rid of him in any way you will,--I advise the county asylum. Get rid of him, and do it quickly before he crazes you." When he had finished, there was an oppressive stillness in the room, as if some sentence had been declared. Mrs. Preston got up and walked to and fro, evidently battling with herself. She stopped opposite him finally. "The only thing that would justify _that_ would be to know that you grasped it all--real happiness in that one bold stroke. Such conviction can _never_ come."