your trade, and I shouldn't want to challenge you on it all; or you know
when to give a horse bran-mash, or a heifer salt-petre, but--well, I know
my job in the same way. They will tell you, about here, that I have a
kind of hobby for keeping people from digging and crawling into their own
graves. That's my business, and the habit of saving human life, because
you're paid for it, becomes in time a habit of saving human life for its
very own sake. I warn you--and perhaps it's a matter of some concern to
you--Mrs. Mazarine is in a bad way."

Resentful and incredulous, the old man was about to speak, but the Young
Doctor made an arresting gesture, and added:

"She has very little strength to go on with. She ought to be plump; her
pulses ought to beat hard; her cheeks ought to be rosy; she should walk
with a spring and be strong and steady as a soldier on the march; but she
is none of these things, can do none of these things. You've got a
thousand things to do, and you do them because you want to do them.
There is something making new life in you all the time, but Mrs. Mazarine
makes no new life as she goes on. Every day is taking something out of
her, and there's nothing being renewed. Sometimes neither good food nor
ozone is enough; and you've got to take care, or you'll lose Mrs.
Mazarine." He could not induce himself to speak of her as "wife."

For a moment the unwholesome mouth seemed to be chewing unpleasant herbs,
and the beady eyes blinked viciously.

"I'm not swallowin' your meaning," Mazarine said at last. "I never
studied Greek. If a woman has a disease, there it is, and you can deal
with it or not; but if she hasn't no disease, then it's chicanyery--
chicanyery. Doctors talk a lot of gibberish these here days. What I