remedies are without effect. Very well; it is necessary that you
should know the disease which your wife, without being consulted,
will run a chance of contracting. Take that book, sir; it is the
work of my teacher. Read it yourself. Here, I have marked the
passage."

He held out the open book; but George could not lift a hand to
take it.

"You do not wish to read it?" the other continued. "Listen to
me." And in a voice trembling with passion, he read: "'I have
watched the spectacle of an unfortunate young woman, turned into
a veritable monster by means of a syphilitic infection. Her
face, or rather let me say what was left of her face, was nothing
but a flat surface seamed with scars.'"

George covered his face, exclaiming, "Enough, sir! Have mercy!"

But the other cried, "No, no! I will go to the very end. I have
a duty to perform, and I will not be stopped by the sensibility
of your nerves."

He went on reading: "'Of the upper lip not a trace was left; the
ridge of the upper gums appeared perfectly bare.'" But then at
the young man's protests, his resolution failed him. "Come," he
said, "I will stop. I am sorry for you--you who accept for
another person, for the woman you say you love, the chance of a
disease which you cannot even endure to hear described. Now,
from whom did that woman get syphilis? It is not I who am
speaking, it is the book. 'From a miserable scoundrel who was