Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/124

100 “I have told you,” began the young woman, slowly, “that my husband and myself reside with his mother in a certain city of the Virginias; that his father is dead, and, by his will, left his entire property to the elder Mrs. Van Bartan—my mother-in-law; that was all true.”

The counsellor nodded.

“The other part,” she went on, “I was trying to put into a 'hypothetical case'—isn't that what you call it?”

She hesitated for a moment.

“It is hard to tell, and I was only trying to save myself, but I suppose the surgeon is quite useless if the wound is not fully revealed. If you will listen to me I will explain. It is hard to tell, and it hurts, but everything is at stake, and if I lose now I lose everything. It will simply mean that I have made sacrifice after sacrifice for nothing at all. One shrinks from putting one's heart upon a dissecting table where the valves may be pinned back and pried into with the point of a scalpel, and so one struggles with a hurt until it finally aches so bitterly that the expert must be had. Then