Hillhouse had to grasp his arm tightly and hold him back as he
stooped down over his wife. In the blindness of his great joy he
would have lifted her in his arms.

"Perfect quiet," said the doctor. "There must be nothing to give her
heart a quicker pulsation. Doctor Angier will remain for half an
hour to see that all goes well."

The two surgeons then retired, Doctor Kline accompanying Doctor
Hillhouse to his office. The latter was silent all the way. The
strain over and the alcoholic stimulation gone, mind and body had
alike lost their abnormal tension.

"I must congratulate you, doctor," said the friendly surgeon who had
assisted in the operation. "It was even more difficult than I had
imagined. I never saw a case in which the sheathings of the internal
jugular vein and carotid artery were so completely involved. The
tumor had made its ugly adhesion all around them. I almost held my
breath when the blood from a severed artery spurted over your
scalpel and hid from sight the keen edge that was cutting around the
internal jugular. A false movement of the hand at that instant might
have been fatal."

"Yes; and but for the clearness of that inner sight which, in great
exigencies, so often supplements the failing natural vision, all
might have been lost," replied Doctor Hillhouse, betraying in his
unsteady voice the great reaction from which he was suffering. "If I
had known," he added, "that the tumor was so large and its adhesion
so extensive, I would not have operated to-day. In fact, I was in no
condition for the performance of any operation. I committed a great