"No, but I tell you the chance for that is mighty slim--only one in ten,
at best. So he holds the cards, except for that one chance of mine. And
if the patient dies in the end it's because I didn't operate when he
advised it--or so he'll let them see he thinks. Not in so many words, but
in the cleverest innuendo of face and manner;--_that's_ what makes me so
mad! If he'd fight in the open! But not he."

"Would he have liked to operate himself?"

Burns laughed--an ugly laugh, such as she had never before heard from his
lips. "Couldn't have been hired to, not even in the beginning, when he
first advocated it. And I couldn't have let him, knowing as well as I
know anything in life that the patient would never have left the table
alive. Don't you see I've had to fight for my patient's very life,--or
rather for his slim chance to live,--knowing all the while that I was
probably digging my own grave. Easy enough to let Van Horn operate, in
the beginning, and kill the patient and prove himself right,--if he would
have done it. Easy enough to pull out of the case and let them have
somebody who would operate on Van Horn's advice."

"Is the patient going down?"

"No, he's holding his own fairly well, but the disease isn't one that
would take him off overnight. It'll be a matter of two or three days yet,
either way. How I'm going to get through them, with things going as they
are;--meeting that Judas there at the bedside, three times a day, and
trying to keep my infernal temper from making me disgrace myself--"

"Red, dear,--"