Doctors are
never sure of anything until it has happened. But speaking with that
reservation I have to tell you that your case is hopeless--that you
have three--at the most four months----"
She had interrupted with a laugh, but the laugh itself had broken in
half. She had read his face. After a long interval she asked a
question--one word--almost inaudibly--and he nodded.
"If you had come earlier one might have operated," he said. "But even
so, it would have been doubtful."
Already many men and women had received their final sentence here in
this room, and each had met it in his own way. The women were the
quietest. Perhaps their lives had taught them to endure the hideous
indignity of a well-ordered death-bed without that galling sense of
physical humiliation which tormented men. For the most part they
became immersed in practical issues--how the news was to be broken to
others, who would look after the house and the children, and how the
last scene might be acted with the least possible inconvenience and
distress for those who would have to witness it. Some men had raved
and stormed and pleaded, as though he had been a judge whose judgment
might be revoked: "Not me--others--not me--not to-day--years hence."
They had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold over
themselves, devastated with shame and horror at the breakdown of their
confident personalities. Some had risen to an impregnable dignity,
finer than their lives.
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