There was a benumbing cruelty in his position.  Even if he renounced every other consideration than that of justifying himself—­ if he met shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made a public statement of all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced?  It would be playing the part of a fool to offer his own testimony on behalf of himself, and say, “I did not take the money as a bribe.”  The circumstances would always be stronger than his assertion.  And besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself must include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against him.  He must tell that he had not known of Raffles’s existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on his being called in to this man.  And after all, the suspicion of Bulstrode’s motives might be unjust.

But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely the same way if he had not taken the money?  Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived, and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his recent heavy obligation.  But if he had not received any money—­ if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy—­ would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding the man dead?—­would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode—­ would the dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members of his profession—­have had just the same force or significance with him?

That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate’s consciousness while he was reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach.  If he had been independent, this matter of a patient’s treatment and the distinct rule that he must do or see done that which he believed best for the life committed to him, would have been the point on which he would have been the sturdiest.  As it was, he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette.  Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had said—­ “the purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious:  my business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it.  Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.  Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.”  Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.