"We call her that," I said shrugging. "And as to her condition, you may examine her yourself." "_Sacre bleu!_" His eyes rolled up like bloodshot cue-balls. "She left us at her own insistence. Aside from ethics, we must not disturb her by my reappearance. But I have a favor to ask. A giant mountain of a fantastic favor. Now that I have found her again, I must not lose her, certainly not, until--" He grabbed pen and paper and moved his chair to my desk. He wrote briefly. "_Voila!_ These simple adjustments in her metabolism--diet, and just a few so petite injections. And may I remain here in the behind-ground, incognito? I will help with other work--at no cost, of course. I will be an orderly, if you will. But I must remain in touch. Close touch." I was a bit nonplussed. A man of Sansome's reputation! It was like a United States Senator pleading for the opportunity to scrub out the men's room at the House of Representatives. Just the same, I wouldn't be stampeded or overawed. Several provocative explanations for the French doctor's concern came to mind.... Was he the repudiated father of Sara's unborn child? Or was he a practitioner of artificial insemination, with a rather unfortunate error to his credit? "Your request is unusual," I said cautiously, "but not entirely unreasonable. In order to justify it, I am sure you will be willing to explain your interest in this case, will you not, Doctor?" * * * * * He frowned, "I suppose I must. But you will believe little of it. My own staff agreed with my diagnosis, but they violently rejected my theory. Wait until they hear _your_ diagnosis, doctor!" He unzipped his briefcase. "She probably protests that she has a malignant tumor, not a baby," he remarked as he laid thick sheafs of paper on my desk. "You are so very right," I said. "Madamoiselle is magnificent," he observed, running slender, wrinkled hands through his sparse gray hair. "But her obstinacy will not avail against evolution. No more than we doctors' monumental ignorance." "Evolution? Explain, please." "Here is the case history." He drummed on it with his short-clipped nails. "In it, you will find that Caffey came to us three months ago with her body cavity in the grasp of a small octopus of a soft form carcinoma. The pain reached from pelvis to chest." "Incredible!" I exclaimed. Sansome spread his hand on the record sheets. "Facts are never incredible," he reminded me gently. "What follows, however, will tax your credulity, and I beg of you to allow me to impose an outrageous concept whose only virtue appears to be its demonstrated validity." "Proceed." "In forty years of slicing away tumerous growths, I had become morbid at the dreadful incidence of recurrence and the obscene mortality rate. In spite of all our techniques, these cancers have increased with the persistence of Nature herself.