and I couldn’t stand the thought of it…. And it has gone on now so long, year after year, and year after year,” she said in a frenzied tone, “always thinking that he couldn’t last and seeing him come back again, that I couldn’t believe that it would ever happen. I can’t believe it now…. And what am I going to do?” she said hoarsely and desperately, clutching McGuire by the sleeve, “what am I going to do now if he really dies? What is there left for me in life with Papa gone?” Her voice was almost sobbing now with grief and desperation—“He’s all I’ve got to live for, Doctor McGuire. I’ve got nothing out of life that I wanted or expected—it’s all been so different from the way I thought it was—I’ve had nothing—no fame, no glory, no success, no children—everything has gone—Papa is all that I have left! If he dies what shall I do?” she cried frantically, shaking him by the sleeve. “That old man is all I’ve got—the only thing I’ve got left to live for; to keep him alive, to make him comfortable, to ease his pain, to see he gets good food and attention—somehow, somehow,” she panted desperately, clasping her big bony hands in a gesture of unconscious but pitiable entreaty, and beginning to rock unsteadily on her feet as she spoke—“somehow, somehow, to keep life in him, to keep him here, not to let him go—that’s all I’ve got to live for—what in the name of God am I going to do when that is taken from me?”
And she paused, panting and exhausted by her tirade, her big face strained and quivering, glaring at him with an air of frantic entreaty as if it was in his power to give the answers to these frenzied questions. And for a moment he said nothing; he just stood there looking at her with the coarse and brutal stare of his blotched face, his venous yellowed eyes, the wet cigarette stuck comically at the corner of one fat lip.
“What are you going to do?” he barked, presently. “You’re going to get hold of yourself—pull yourself together—amount to something, be somebody!” He coughed chokingly to one side, for a moment there was just the sound of his thick short breathing, then he flung the cigarette away, and said quietly:
“Helen, for God’s sake, don’t throw your life away! Don’t destroy the great creature that lies buried in you somewhere—wake it up, make it come to life. Don’t talk to me of this old man’s life as if it were your own—”
“It is, it is!” she said in a brooding tone of morbid fatality.
“It is not!” he said curtly, “unless you make it so—unless you play the weakling and the fool and throw yourself away. For God’s sake, don’t let
