poor bodies can support. These--you do not see them, and they do
not count for you. But again, if it concerned no one but
yourself, you might be able to argue thus. What I declare to
you, what I affirm with all the violence of my conviction, is
that you have not the right to expose a human creature to such
chances--rare, as I know, but terrible, as I know still better.
What have you to answer to that?"

"Nothing," stammered George, brought to his knees at last. "You
are right about that. I don't know what to think."

"And in forbidding you marriage," continued the doctor, "is it
the same as if I forbade it forever? Is it the same as if I told
you that you could never be cured? On the contrary, I hold out
to you every hope; but I demand of you a delay of three or four
years, because it will take me that time to find out if you are
among the number of those unfortunate ones whom I pity with all
my heart, for whom the disease is without mercy; because during
that time you will be dangerous to your wife and to your
children. The children I have not yet mentioned to you."

Here the doctor's voice trembled slightly. He spoke with moving
eloquence. "Come, sir, you are an honest man; you are too young
for such things not to move you; you are not insensible to duty.
It is impossible that I shan't be able to find a way to your
heart, that I shan't be able to make you obey me. My emotion in
speaking to you proves that I appreciate your suffering, that I
suffer with you. It is in the name of my sincerity that I
implore you. You have admitted it--that you have not the right
to expose your wife to such miseries. But it is not only your