Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/116

 supply, all unguessed, the lacking force of a good but weak man, who with this borrowed strength stands firm and upright in his place, unconscious, as is the rest of the world, of the power that keeps him there. That every woman must find her master is less true than that every woman should find her mate.

Margaret had grown to regard Philip as very dependent upon her, and unconsciously her manner to him had become one of affectionate protection. She had almost lost sight of the quality in him which once had prompted her to say, "There is the stuff of which martyrs are made in Philip Rondelet." And yet, if she had known all the struggles of his daily life, she would not have let the idea slip so easily from her mind. The profession to which Rondelet had been trained was extremely distasteful to him, though he was endowed with unusual ability for it. His father, a well-known surgeon, was conscious of this shrinking from the unsightly details of medical life on the part of his son, and yet was convinced that the rare skill in operation, and the quick, sound judgment in diagnosis which he showed, outweighed his natural aversion to all contact with disease. More from a certain indolent dislike of opposing his father's will than from anything else, Philip had embraced the profession of medicine; but since the