perchance she might extract more beneficent sympathy by physical
methods, she impulsively threw herself into where-his-arms-would-have-
been had he not side-stepped. Her position physically and
sentimentally was awkward; the doctor called the nurse and left her.
Later he returned and did his best to appeal to her womanhood; he
analyzed her illness and showed her some of the damage it had wrought
both in her character and to others. He showed her the demoralization
which had grown out of her wretched surrender to impulsive desire. He
revealed to her the necessity for the effacement of much of her false
self and the true spiritualizing of her mind as the only road to
wholesome living. That same day Dr. Platt received a telegram
peremptorily demanding that he come for her. Upon his arrival he had a
short talk with the specialist who succinctly told him the problem as
he saw it. For a few minutes, and for a few minutes only, was his
faith in the helpless reality of his wife's sickness shaken; but faith
and pity and indignation were united as she told of her mistreatment
and how she had been outraged and her whole character questioned by
that "brutal doctor," who talked to her as no one had ever dared
before. She was going home on the first train and going home we found
her, having another attack in the Pullman. A collapse, her husband
told himself, from over-exertion and the result of her wounded
womanhood. "A plain case o' high-strikes" was the porter's diagnosis;
a sickness sufficiently adequate to have the sweet incense of much
public attention poured upon her wounded spirit--and to secure the
coveted drawing-room!

On her way home! She had spurned her one chance to be scientifically
taught the woefully needed lessons of right living-on her way to the
home which had become more and more chaotic with the passing of the
years and the dwindling of their means.