"It will be a scandal!" George exclaimed.

"You will avoid one far greater," the other replied.

Suddenly George set his lips with resolution. He rose from his
seat. He took several twenty-franc pieces from his pocket and
laid them quietly upon the doctor's desk--paying the fee in cash,
so that he would not have to give his name and address. He took
up his gloves, his cane and his hat, and rose.

"I will think it over," he said. "I thank you, Doctor. I will
come back next week as you have told me. That is--probably I
will."

He was about to leave.

The doctor rose, and he spoke in a voice of furious anger. "No,"
he said, "I shan't see you next week, and you won't even think it
over. You came here knowing what you had; you came to ask advice
of me, with the intention of paying no heed to it, unless it
conformed to your wishes. A superficial honesty has driven you
to take that chance in order to satisfy your conscience. You
wanted to have somebody upon whom you could put off, bye and bye,
the consequences of an act whose culpability you understand! No,
don't protest! Many of those who come here think and act as you
think, and as you wish to act; but the marriage made against my
will has generally been the source of such calamities that now I
am always afraid of not having been persuasive enough, and it
even seems to me that I am a little to blame for these