“I lay on my bed a week, a long, utterly damnable week.  I could do nothing but think.  So I thought, as I told you, of everything.  Most of all I thought of you, Virginia Page.  Shall I tell you why?  No; we’ll let that go until we understand each other.  I thought of myself, of my life, of my eternal striving with Jim Galloway.  Some day I should get Galloway or he would get me.  In either case, what good?  Was not Galloway a wiser man than I?  He took what he wanted; I merely wasted my time chasing after such bigger men as he.  If he desired a thousand dollars or five, ten thousand, he went out for it like a man and took it.  Why shouldn’t he?  Oh, I tell you I had the time to dwell upon the little meaningless words of honesty and dishonesty, honor and dishonor, and all of their progeny and forebears!  They are empty; empty, I tell you, Virginia!  When I stood on my feet again I was a free man.  I knew it then, I know it now.  Free, I tell you.  Free, most of all from shackles of empty ideas.  What I wanted I would take.”

She looked at him helplessly, his dominant vigor for the moment seeming a thing not to be restricted or tamed.

“What you have done,” she told him gently, “is to find argument to bolster up impulse.  That is generally very easy to do, isn’t it?  If one wants a thing, it is not hard convincing himself that it is right that he should have it.”

“At least I have decided sanely what I wanted, there is no call for hospitals.”

“You sustained a fracture of the skull.  That fracture had improper treatment.  It is a wonder you did not die.  The wound healed and there remains a pressure of a bit of bone upon the brain.  Until that pressure is removed by an operation you are doomed to be a criminal.  A kleptomaniac,” she said steadily, “if not much worse.”

“I believe that you mean what you say.  You are just mistaken, that is all.  I’d know if there were anything physically wrong.”

She came closer, laid her hand upon his arm, and lifted her eyes pleadingly to his.

“I have had the best of medical training,” she said slowly.  “I have specialized in brain disorders, interested in that branch of my work until I decided to bring Elmer out here.  I know what I am saying.  Will you at least promise to do as I ask?  Have a thorough examination by a specialist?  And have the operation if he advises it?”

“Such an operation is a serious matter?”

“Yes.  It must be.  But think . . .”

“A man might die under the hands of the surgeon?”

“Yes.  There is always the danger, there is always the chance of death resulting from any but the most minor of operations.  But you are not the man to be afraid, Rod Norton.  I know that.”

“You say that you have specialized In this sort of thing.”  He was probing for her thoughts with keen, narrowed eyes.  “Would you be willing to perform that operation for me?”