Se " Bellefonte, Pa., August 17, ° 1928. —— A SLIP OF THE KNIFE. Dwellers in cities, at any rate if they contain within them any residue of the savage man whom they deride, must be pricked at times by a longing to get away from houses and the ev- erlasting cries of the streets into the wastes and the wilds, where nature definitely dominates man. This get- ting away—it is a sort of strange go- ing home. It brings to the inner man a curious intimate satisfaction, the happy sense of an appeased appetite. He has a feeling of finding himself in loneliness. One day in London I felt I must get away, go right away, if only for a week or ten days. My brain felt jaded with work. My ears were weary of noise. : I opened a yellow railway guide, turned over the pages, and at last paused, arrested by a note of simplic- ity which seemed to sound clearly, delicately through my mind after all the hubbub of blatancy. Upon the page before me was a small picture of a whitewashed house, ground floor and one story about it, and under- neath was printed the following ad- vertisement: The Trout Inn Sand Hills Cumberland. Comfortable rooms for travelers. Good plain cooking. Reasonable terms. Fine sands. Good bathing. Golf. Fresh- water fishing. Excursions to the Lake District. Open all the year round. A simple advertisement enough, and that was just why it attracted me. I never had heard of Sand Hills, Cumberland. I never had heards of the Trout Inn. Mrs. Emma Marsh’s name was unknown to me. I pictured her as a plump red- cheeked Cumberland widow great in the cooking of that famous Cumber- land dish, ham and eggs. And she must be a sensible woman because so unpretentious. Actually she announc- ed her house for travelers as an inn —good old, well-nigh forgotten word. Surely, surely the Trout Inn for me! And quickly I turned the pages once more and looked up Sand Hills in the railway part of the guide. Yes, there was a station. I glanced at a map. Sand Hills lay on the coast be- tween Carnforth and Whitehaven, much nearer to the latter than to the former town. It could not be very far from West Water where the mountains begin. The month was October. The golf, the fishing would be all right. And I could walk the sands, on the lonely sands—they surely must be lonely—- and forget all the voices of London. I got out a Norfolk jacket, a pair of gray trousers. I packed a suit- case. On the following morning be- fore ten o'clock I was at Euston rail- way station. It was good to get to Carnforth. It was better still, having changed to a train of the Furness railway, to run along the coast ever northward. Of- ten we were close to the sea. It was a rather dark afternoon. The foam of the tumbling sea seem- ed to make a long gash in the gray- ness. When I let down the carriage window on the sea side a sharp, eager wind came in to me, salty and almost fierce. Gulls flew up in squadrons. Lonelier, ever lonelier grew the land. Then the sea was blotted out and the train ran between the hummocky sand-hills and meadows enclosed by stone walls. Five minutes later the sea again came in sight with a few cold-looking houses on a low treeless hill, and below, at the edge of pale yellow flat sands, another line of . small houses set along a rough bit of green going into the sands. The train slowed up, stopped. I heard a Cumbrain voice saying, “Sand Hills! Sand Hills!” Destination—Trout Marsh! The wind up there seemed to em- phasize, even to make the loneliness of of the place. The seaside season was of course quite over, and there was certainly no crowd in the Trout Inn. True, as I entered it, treading on oil- cloth past a stuffed otter in a glass case, I heard rough talk coming ev- idently from a concealed bar. But when I went down a dipping passage, covered with more oilcloth, into the “coffee-room”—if you please—to have a belated tea I found only two per- sons there. an elderly lady with bandeaux on which sat a white cap trimmed with shining black cherries, and a thin, long-nosed and dreary- faced man, perhaps her son, who was playing a patience while she did some worsted work by one of the large win- dows which shook under the assault of the wind. They looked at me as if with suspicion, certainly with sur- prise. Tea finished, I resolved to go out at once and have a look around, and again I moved over the oilcloth. Just as reached the stuffed otter a large elderly woman emerged from a narrow passage on the left. She had a rubicund determined face, steady eyes and smooth brown hair partly cover- ed by a black bonnet which had un- fastened strings. “Mrs. Emma Marsh!” I said to my- self. “Good afternoon,” said I. “Good afternoon, sir,” she replied, with a Cumbrian accent. “This is your hotel 7” “The Trout is mine, sir. My hus- band’s been dead these ten years. I hope you'll feel yourself comfortable.” “So far I'm delighted,” I said. “I’m just going out to get a breath of your splendid air.” “Though I says it as shouldn’t, sir, the air here is every bit as good as Blackpool’s.” “I'm sure it is.” And then I went out. I crossed the railway line, passed through a swing gate and was soon on the sands. Although the tide was flowing it was still far out. I began to walks briskly and—I don’t know why—I walked southward. I love the feel of firm sand under my feet, and after London days the Inn—Emma | glorious freshnes of the wind, coming straight to me over the rollers, stung me into a physical activity I had not known for long. I walked with ener- gy, on and on into the loneliness of this strangely desolate shore. The lights of Sand Hills fadded and died behind me. Now, when I had walked for per- haps twenty minutes I was aware of a light at some distance away on my left, raised, it seemed to me, a little in the darkness, as if it shone on one of the low sand-hills and was close to the shore. I stood still on the sand and looked at it. A lonely house here, in this deso- late place, in the midst of this rum- mage of hillocks away from any high- road! Curiosity took hold of me as 1 stared at that yellow eye which stared back at me steadily, and yet, as I fancied, somewhat stealthily. My imagination got to work. Some oddity must have lighted that lamp, some crank, some peculiar specimen of humanity who had a morbid taste for solitude and who had found jt here on the fringe of this desolate shore in the midst of winds and sea voices. My desire for quick progress along the hard sands was checked, and af- ter standing still for some time I turned off at right angles and made my way towards the light. I got among some low rocks, interspersed with sandy basins and small pools of water, and after negotiating them found myself at the foot of a slope of loose sand and pebbles leading up to the sand-hills, among which I now could see the light shining out of a bungalow which was set in the midst of a rabbit-warren. I mounted the slope and stool still. The bungalow looked fairly large and amazingly solitary. It had a jut- ting window. In the window, or very near it, was set the lamp which had drawn me to the fence of barbed wire protecting the sandy demesne. There seemed no attempt at a garden. 1 was standing among the pebbles look- ing at the general darkness of this house raised a little above me, and broken only by the one light, when I heard a man’s voice say, “What is it you want ’em?” The voice was rather deep. It sounded cultivated but acutely suspi- cious. It startled me, as I had not seen anyone near me in the dim even- ing light which was darkening rap- idly into the blackness of night. Be- fore I had made any reply to the ab- rupt question addressed to me I saw the figure of a man rise up before me from behind a small sand-bank out of a depression in the warren. He stepped up to the wire fence and con- fronted me. Tall, broad but thin, he had a red, or rather purplish-red face with high cheek-bones, and bright, quickly shifting eyes whose color I couldn’t determine, a thin gray mustache and wispy brown hair wich showed be- neath a battered old cap. He wore an obviously old mustard-yellow coat, and carried a thick gnarled stick in his right hand. His hands, I noticed, were of much the same color as his face. I guessed him to be about fif- ty-five and a gentleman. “Want anything?” he added, still in the suspicious deep voice. “No, nothing,” I said. : “Then what are you doing here?” he rejoined. “I was walking on the sands. I saw a light and wondered what it shone from, as the country along here is so lonely. That’s why I am here.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, for I wanted him to look at me and be reassured. For this was a man ob- viously ready to be suspicious, perhaps even afraid. And he interested me. So I didn’t want him to be afraid of me. Apparently he must have sum- med me up while I looked away, for he said in a different tone: “You’re from Sand Hills?” “Yes. I'm at the inn for a few days to get a little air. I live in Lon- don and felt rather run down.” “Oh, you're at Emma Marsh’s place,” he said. There was an instant of silence. Then he added, “Well, good night to you!” And I saw his big form walk away over the hillocks and depressions of the warren and disappear round a corner of the bun- galow. That same night after dinner in the coffee-room I resolved to try to have a little talk with Emma Marsh. My interview at the edge of the war- ren had made me, I confess, inquisi- tive about the dweller in the bunga- low. And from the intonation of the stranger’s voice when he had said, “Oh, you’re at Emma Marsh’s place,” I had gathered that he was on friend- ly terms with my landlady. Accordingly, directly the bananas and nuts of which our dessert con- cisted had been dealt with, I bowed to the lady with the black cherries and the dreary young man with the long nose, made my way up the slight hill from the coffee-room, and betook myself to the stuffed otter. Opposite him on the right I had noticed a sort of parlor which I guessed to be Em- ma Marsh’s private sanctum. As I arrived in front of it the door hap- pened to be standing open, and I saw Mrs. Marsh within, wearing a black gown and a white cap and taking something out of a large work-basket which stood upon the round table in front of her. She looked up as I appeared and said, “Good evening, sir.” “Good evening. You're cozy in here,” I said, looking at the bright fire behind her. “On a windy night like this it’s nice to be warm.” “Yes, sir. It’s pretty near always windy here—leastways—when sum- mer’s over. Would you like to step in?” “Very much, if I may,” I answered. And I stepped in and went up to the fire as if that were the chief attrac- tion for me. “Sit down, sir, please, if you care to,” said Mrs. Marsh, who was evi- dently not averse to company. “Thanks, very much.” I sat down in a round-backed wood- en chair with a hard cushion of horse- hair. fitted into it, and put my hands towards the fire. She sat down too, after partially closing the door, and began doing some work by the table in a thoroughly composed manner. | Decidedly a somebody in her way— Mrs. Emma Marsh. I began warily. First I talked in a general way about Cumberland, then. I drew to Sand Hills, and finally I got to my afternoon walk. “What wonderful sands you have here!” I said. “Yes, sir. Blackpool hasn’t any better,” said my hostess to whom ev- idently Blackpool represented the acme of nature’s and civilization’s most glorious. “I could walk on them for miles and never be tired.” “That’s what prety near everyone that comes here says, sir. Did you go far?” “As far as the bungalow.” I saw Mrs. Marsh—somehow, since I began I felt less familiar, and men- tally dropped the mere Emma from my mind—Ilook up from her work. “That’s a, good step, sir, in the dark.” “I had a few words with your neigh- bor.” “You did, sir!” prised, I thought. the shore, sir?” “No. I went to have a look at the bungalow. He was in the warren and spoke to me.” “Did he so, sir?” “Yes. Has he been there long? In the bungalow, I mean.” “Over eleven years now, sir.” “Got his family there, I suppose?” “Family! Well, I never! Mr. Blow's not a family man, sir.” “Lives there alone, does he?” “Well, sir, there’s a servant comes in by the day from Brigg village— that’s about a mile away—and does for him, but that’s all. Did he speak to you?” “Yes. He asked me what I was there for—what I wanted.” “Ah!” said Mrs. Marsh, and as she said it she moved her head down- wards, suddenly producing a double chin. “Ah!” she repeated, as if to herself. And she pursed up her lips. “He doesn’t like people round his house, perhaps,” I ventured. “No, sir, he doesn’t. He’s afraid of ’em.” “Afraid—why 7” “That’s what we don’t know, sir, what none of us knows after his be- ing here eleven years. But the funny thing is—"” She paused. “The funny thing, is this—that all the time the poor man’s just pining for company.” “How d’you know that?” “Well, he isn’t afraid of me, sir, not now, and he’s as good as told me so. He ain’t meant to live alone.” She sounded sur- “He was down on “I wonder why he does it, then.” “So do we all, sir Why he came here, why he stays on here year in and year out, we don’t none of us know.” “Did he build the bungalow ?” “It’s made of iron, sir throughout except for the flooring, I believe. He bought the bit of land it stands on and | just had it brought here and set up as you see it.” “Doesn’t he have visitors?” “Never, sir.” “What does he do?” “Walks about, sir. And he reads a lot, they do say, and paints a bit now and then. He don’t make any debts. There’s nothing against him, nothing whatever.” ; “Doesn’t anyone who comes here to stay try to get to know him?” “No sir. Why should they?” I had no answer to that. “But the clergyman. You say there’s a village called Brigg. Hasn't the clergyman——" “Oh, yes, sir, he’s been, and the clergyman here, Mr. Powting, he’s been. But Mr. Blow, he don’t hold with the clergy.” “Well—the doctor?” “Mr. Blow’s never ill, sir. And I believe he’s all against doctors.” Doesn’t hold with the clergy and is all against doctors! I left Mrs. Marsh that night wondering quite a lot about Mr. Blow. Our impressions, sudden and vital, are sometimes very sharp. Some- thing Mrs. Marsh had said about the dweller in the bungalow had backed up an impression of mine. She had expressed the conviction that he was afraid of people and yet longed for company. During my very brief in- terview with him I had felt that he was afraid of me, but also that if if had not been for his fear of me he would have been glad to keep me with him. I resolved to try to force my way through his fear, to set him at his ease, to get to know him better. The man interested me. I had been with him only for a moment but I had felt force, intelligence, good breeding in him, and something mysterious surely had reached out as if sensi- tively, yet almost with terror—the terrom of a great reserve—seeking my sympathy, even perhaps my pity. I knew that I couldn’t leave the dwel- ler in the bungalow in his solitude without making at least one quite definite attempt to break in on it. This attempt, I may say here, I nev- er should have made if I hadn’t felt certain Mrs. Marsh was right and that he was longing for speech with some fellow creature. It was so. On the following morn-' ing I walked along the beach and passed the bungalow, going far be- yond it. I had the feeling when pass- ing it that I was seen, although I saw no one. When I returned the tide was nearly up and as I approached I saw Mr. Blow standing at the edge of the ' sea. He was throwing pebbles into the foam that eddied about his feet and seemed not to notice my coming. But I had the conviction that he had marked my outward walk and was waiting for me. Nevertheless, he teok no notice of me, and when I passed behind him he didn’t turn his head to glance at me. Only when I was several yards away from him did he give in—to what? His overmastering desire tg have speech with someone, I felt sure. Then I heard his deep voice call, “Hello!” I turned round. “Good morning— you want to speak to me?” I said. He hesitated obviously, but at last he said: “Yes, if you've no objection.” And in this oddly abrupt manner haps I had. I wasn’t sure. My mind | my acquaintance with Derrick Blow so he called himself at that time—be- gan. At first he was not at all at his ease with me. He had, I suppose, the natural shyness of a man long unac- customed to intercourse with his kind. But there was something else, I felt, which made him self-conscious and watchful. He made upon me the impression of a man who had suffered acutely, who even then was suffering from some tragedy of the past which had made him afraid of his fellow men. There were moments when I fan- cied I detected a look as of guilt in his eyes when he forced them, as he sometimes did, to meet mine. But gradually, walking with me on the desolate sands day after day, he ev- idently became accustomed to me and felt much more at his ease. He even opened out to me, but on topics of general interest, never on anything fannacted with his personal, intimate ife. I found him a man of force, ob- viously well educated and interested in big matters. He never talked friv- olously or even lightly, though ie had a sense of humor, rather sar- donic. I often wondered what he had been in the past. I say what, because I gradually came to the conviction that he had been a worker, probably a great worker, and that he must have succeeded in what he had under- taken. The man could not have been just an ordinary failure. Often I saw him as one crashing—but from a height. I had known him for ten days. Not a very long time, but it seemed to ,me that world nature had drawn ns together into a strange sort of in- timacy. It was on the tenth day that he told me he had practiced as a sur- geon. | He let this fact out by accident. I had been speaking of some medical discovery connected with the action of drugs, and to my surprise he sud- _denly broke out into a diatribe on the vague humbug of medicine, contrast- ing it with the marvelous definiteness jo modern surgery. | “Medicine is three parts bunkum,” the said. “It’s surgery that saves lives.” adding. The effect of my remark on him was startling. He abruptly stood still. “Is that meant for me?” he said, with a sort of hushed intensity that struck right into me like a weapon. “For you!” I said. “But are you a surgeon ?”’ ; “Ah—you didn’t know it?” he said, in a quite different, almost faltering voice. “Of course not. How could I? I i know nothing whatever about you.” i “No,” he said hesitatingly. “How ! should you? Well”—again he hesi- tated, but finally as if with an effort concluded the sentence—“well, I have been a surgeon. I was even what is called famous—a famous surgeon.” | And then he was silent. “Shall we walk on?” I sugested. “Would you—would you like to come to the bungalow ?” he asked me. I was surprised, for he never be- fore had invited me into his dwelling, but I accepted his offer at once, and we turned from the sands, and went into the bungalow. I was surprised to find how cozy, spacious and even charming it was. Made of iron, there was nothing to suggest iron in the interior. Fine rugs lay on the parqueted floors. Good pictures hung on the wails, which were tinted in beautiful colors. Arm chairs were covered with cre- tonnes in fine designs. There were quantities of books. One knew at once that this was the home of a great and omnivorous reader. As twilight was setting in Blow lighted a lamp, drew shutters, pulled forward cur- tains of mandarin-yellow. “I'll tell my servant to bring us coffee,” he said. He went out of the room, but came back in a moment with a box of ex- cellent cigars and made me take one. And he did all this with an odd air of almost excited eagerness. A mid- dle-aged, very respectable-looking woman came in and set down a large silver tray holding a silver coffee-pot, a silver jug full of boiling milk and a large silver dish of buttered toast. She went out quickly, but not before she had directed to me a look of sur- prise. “She’s surprised!” Blow comment- ed as the door shut behind her. “I never have people in.” “Why don’t you?” I said. “It’s very bad for you to be always alone. You're suffering acutely from loneli- ness. And the winters! How can you get through the winters here all hy yourself 7” “How ? Somehow! I've spent eleven winters up here.” He helped me and himself. “It’s unnatural,” I said. | “I came to live here because I was afraid of meeting people,” he said. “I had a great catastrophe in my life. Have you ever had one in yours?” | “I've had troubles, anxieties, but ‘never an actual catastrophe.” { “Such a thing makes you afraid of | your kind. I killed my own son.” { The abruptnes of this hideous rev- elation from a man who till that day, till that very hour, had been so ab- solutely reserved about his life and personal affairs, startled me, even turned me cold. I could not imagine why Blow had told me this dreadful thing. ~ He must have read my thought, for he added after an instant spent in staring at me closely: “I've been wanting to tell you ever since I saw you by the fence that evening. I don’t know why. But I felt as if you had been sent in order that I might tell’ ou.” “Perhaps I was,” I murmured. “There’s a design—perhaps I was.” At that moment I felt certainly in- tense pity for my companion, but I felt a quite definite shrinking from him. “You're wrong,” he said, in a low . ; voice. | “Wrong! But——7" i “You think it was deliberate mur- der, don’t you?” I suppose I had thought that. Per- felt confused. 2 “I told you I was a surgeon,” he had a chance to see my son. I felt| ] “Now can’t you understand?” pretty desperate and because of that mine. said + “D’you mean that you operated on “Or destroys them!” I couldn’t help your own son and killed him by mis- take?” I said. “But I thought—I had an idea that a man wasn’t allow- ed to perform an operation on his own child, at any rate without an assist- ant. Possibly I'm wrong though about that.” He didn’t tell me whether I was right or wrong. Instead, he remarked: “Do you happen to remember the death of the only son, only child, of Lord Drenmere a good many years ago?” : “Drenmere, who was at the British Embassy in Paris as—as——" “First Secretary.” “And who is now— “He’s a minister now, and will be an Ambassador.” “Why—Dbut there was an awful fuss about his boy’s death, wasn’t there? The surgeon who performed the op- eration make a mistake, surely. It was Sir Mortimer Laton and——" Suddenly I pulled up. I had realiz- ed who the man of the bungalow was. “You’re Laton!” I said, after a long pause. “That’s it. I'm Mortimer Laton. After that business I gave up practice and dropped out of life. I came and hid myself here. Very few people ever think of me now. But those who happen to probably suppose I've done the usual thing men who get into trouble do—gone abroad.” “But you said you killed your own son!” “I did. I was the father of the boy who was supposed to be Drenmere’s.” “And didn’t he know it?” “Not till I killed the child.” I said nothing more, but sat back in my chair and looked at him. I was Yorfering why he was telling me this. “An impulse!” he said. “An over- powering impulse—but one that has years of misery behind it. The man who instituted confession as part and parcel of a religion was a great psychologist. But unfortunately I don’t belong to any form of religion. I'm out in the cold. §f I weren't I don’t suppose for a ment I ever should have bored you'gith my bur- den. Sorry—sorry—sorry!” He wrinkled the high forehead un- der his soft brown hair—hair that re- tained its color and that yet looked rather old—and got up in a violently restless way. I felt that he was dreadfully disappointed in me, that I had hurt his pride, had wounded the intense reserve which he had broken away from for a moment be- cause, I suppose, of something in me. “Laton, I wish you would tell me— if you can,” I said hastily, eagerly. “I should like to share with you, if you can bring yourself to it. Iwas interested in you from the first mo- ment I saw you that evening in the warren. I wanted to know you. I came back the next day with the hope of seeing you again. And then you called me. “Yes, he said, sitting down again. “I felt I must. It’s deuced odd.” “We've gone so far, why not go all the way?” My manner evidently had reassured him. He must have felt my sympathy reaching out, for he seemed suddenly more at his ease. “Friendship’s a great thing,” he said. “But love’s betrayed it over and over again, and will till the end of time. I was a great friend of Dren- mere’s, and a true friend till he mar- ried and I fell in love with his wife. But—then! I suppose occasionally you've read divorce cases in which a man’s friend has seduced his wife— eh?” ¢ “Yes,” I said. “And you’ve condemned the seduc- er as a blackguard? Exactly! Every- one does. But they don’t reckon with love, which can be the most unscrup- ” ulous passion humanity holds, which ¥ -will trample over corpses to get to its goal. However, I won’t bother you with all the ramifications of my sentimental life, if you like to call it so. Ill state merely the fact that after Drenmere married Lady Sybil Caryllis, and had been married some time to her, I fell desperately in love ‘with her. She was, in fact, the only love of my life. There never could be another. “Drenmere was appointed to our legation in Persia not very long af- | ter the marriage. Her health at that time was not good. Barton Mills, the nerve specialist, said she simply mustn’t go with him. She didn’t go. She remained in London. Drenmere begged me to give an eye to her while they were separated. I said I would. When he came back we were lovers— but nothing had happened. You un- derstand me?” “Yes.” “It happened two days after he came back. His return had made us both desperate, and she wanted to prove to me that even when she saw him again I was the one. Madness and disgraceful, of course! But so it was. He had expected to go back to Persia, but because she couldn’t go and because he could pull strings they sent him instead to the legation at Stockholm. “My boy was born in Sweden. He was mine. There’s no doubt about that. When he began to grow and develop you had only to look at him. She knew it too. But Drenmere hadn’t the faintest suspicion. I knew, we both knew, that till the night of catastrophe not a doubt of his wife, not a doubt of his friend, ever had darkened his mind. As to the boy— I’ve never seen a father love a son as Drenmere loved my son.” “Whom he considered his,” I said. ” “But if he had “I think it’s very dangerous to say what turn any man’s heart will take ‘in given circumstances,” said Laton. “The body of man is mysterious enough. But what we call the heart of man is a thousand times more mys- terious. I know that. It’s been my profession to study the one and my | fate to have the other revealed to | me for an instant in a blinding light. { The strangest thing of all is that I "cut into the heart of the friend I be- , trayed with my surgeon’s knife.” | “How could that be?” I said. “This way,” said Laton. “I was separated from—from her. I hadn’t .1 worked like a devil. I got on tre- mendously fast in my profession. I do believe I had a gift with the knife such as few men of my time had. Money came to me. Honors came to me. But I was separated from the wo- man I loved and from my son. At that vime, when money and fame in my profession both came in full meas- ure, I was a very miserable man and a very lonely one. I was punished. That one word really tells the whole story of that time. “I didn’t see my son till 1e»wzs two years old. Then the Drenmeres were over for a short time. In that short time I got to love the boy. But my love was poisoned by jealousy of Drenmere. I won’t go into that. It’s all natural but it’s too ugly. Many ugly things are dreadfully natural, During the time when they were in Fueland she—Sybil—and I didn’t yield to our love again. But we were just the same. Only she was a moth- er now, passionately devoted to the boy, and—well, we didn’t. That’s all. “They went back to Stockholm. Then Drenmere was transferred to Bucharest, and finally he was sent to the Paris embassy. “From time to time they came to London and I saw them. From time to time I went over to Paris and was with thera a little then. I was able to observe at close quarters Dren- mere’s intense love of my child. My own love I had to keep in the shadow —my love for mother and child. It was like looking in at a window and seeing your family in the grip of an- other man. 2 i “When my fame as a surgeon was at its height and Marcus, the boy, the only child she had had, for Drenmere never gave her a child, was ten years old and on the eve of being sent to an English preparatory school, he be- came alarmingly ill in Paris and Drenmere sent me a desperate tele- gram asking me to go over at once. While I was answering it a telegram came from her, a telegram of one word—‘Come.’ “I crossed by the night-boat and drove to their house in the Champs Elysees. Two French doctors were there, one of them a well-known and expert surgeon. The case had been diagnosed. The child was suffering from a deep-seated gastric ulcer. I realized at once that an immediate operation was necessary for fear of perforation. Drenmere begged me to perform it.” Laton stopped speaking for an in- stant. Then he said in a low voice, “I felt I couldn’t.” Again he was silent. At last I said: “You had lost your nerve? That was it?” Then he looked up and nodded. “All my frustrated love for the child seemed to break away from something, some barrier, and flood me then. I knew I wasn’t master of my- self. I knew it wasn’t safe for me to operate, I refused. Drenmere insist- ed He was in an awful state. He said he wouldn’t trust a French sur- geon, wouldn’t trust anyone but me. I still refused. Then he attacked me, said I was a false friend if I wouldn’t try to save his chiid, I who was per- forming operations on strangers every day of my life. “She implored me, too. She must have lost her head then, for she couldn’t understand that I was the last man who ought to have operated that night. I did my best to resist. I was overcome. They made me do it. Women can be cruel when the mother comes uppermost She said a terrible thing to me that night just before T was going to operate. She was beside herself—but still—” He hesitated. “What did she help asking. “ ‘Save Markie ou;’ ” “That was brutal” “She didn’t mean it. She was half mad. But I believe it was that sen- tence and the sound of her voice when she said it that really caused the tragedy which followed. I made a ‘ desperate effort to master myself. But I failed. Too much, for me, hung on that operation. I bungled. The knife slipped. I injured the child ir- reparably. Peritonitis set in. He died. { “There were people in the room, nurses, a French surgeon assisting me. They—they didn’t miss my mis- take. I wasn’t able to hide it. I was so desperate that I didn’t even try to hide it. As you know, it got out and my reputation was ruined. I lost both my son and my career during that brief stay in Paris. But I lost more than that. I lost my friend, and I lost the love of the woman I adored. It i was very complete, the catastrophe!” “But “you mean that she told Lord Drenmere ?” I asked. “No, I told him,” he answered. “When the boy died Drenmere showed fineness of character. He wrung my hand and said, ‘It’s not your fault. You tried to have him. Anyone could make a mistake.’ If he’d stopped there I might have controlled myself though I was almost entirely out of hand. But he added, ‘Please God, you'll never have to face such a sor- row as mine.” Then I was lost. I don’t make any apology. I did the unpardonable thing. “I gave a woman away. I let go. Something broke in me—the thing that inhibits. I just told him, blurt-- ed it out, that I was facing a far worse sororw than his.” He looked at me with a sort of fierce steadiness. “Of course you condemn me,” he said, i “No,” I said. “But—I wish you hadn’t.” 5 “There are moments when a man has to be truthful. That was one of them. Truth was stronger than what. we call honor, stronger than chivalry, stronger than sex. It had to come out. It came out and—I live here alone.” “How did Drenmere take it?” “He said—when he’d had time to realize the truth—‘If Markie was: yours in the flesh he was mine in every other way. He loved me and he never loved you. If he was alive now and knew, he'd still love me. He was mine: .in the only real way. The body can’t choose always. But nothing can pre- vent the spirit from having its way. I always shall think of Markie as at’s what he said. That's i (Continued on page 7, Col. 1.) say?” I couldn’ or I shall hate
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