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 spectful. "I tell you there's nothing between them!"

"Except love—I am sure of that," said the doctor with niceness of distinction, and refusing to be insulted by the man he was compelled to hurt in order that perhaps he might help him. "The pathos of the struggle, the thing that should make you in this moment extend to your wife the supremest consideration, is that for the last few months, perhaps a year, there has been but one love."

George's hands gripped the chair arms tightly; he was making the supremest effort to control himself. "Go on! Go on with your damnable deductions," he challenged. "I can answer them every one. She lovesme. My wife loves me!"

"But one love," iterated the doctor, with painstaking firmness, still unresentful and pitying, compassionate because of the pain his verbal exploratory slashings caused. "Of late it has been a fierce struggle between love of one man and loyalty to another. She has tried to be your faithful wife; she has tried by a thousand arts and inventions and games she played with herself to keep her love for you alive, to resurrect it when it was dead, to—"

"Doctor!" groaned George, appealingly, as conviction was breaking surely in. "Doctor—don't say that it's dead."