“I don’t believe that,” said Grace.

“Well, then, because your patients are women.  It’s all one.  What will you do?”

“I shall not do anything.  I shall give it all up.”

“But what shall you do then?”

“I—­don’t know.”

“What are you going to be?  A fashionable woman?  Or are you going to Europe, and settle down there with the other American failures?  I’ve heard about them,—­in Rome and Florence and Paris.  Are you going to throw away the study you’ve put into this profession?  You took it up because you wanted to do good.  Don’t you want to do good any more?  Has the human race turned out unworthy?”

She cowered at this arraignment, in which she could not separate the mocking from the justice.  “What do you advise me to do?  Do you think I could ever succeed?”

“You could never succeed alone.”

“Yes, I know that; I felt that from the first.  But I have planned to unite with a woman physician older than myself.”

“And double your deficiency.  Sit down here,” he said; “I wish to talk business.”  They had entered the border of the woods encompassing Jocelyn’s, and he painted to a stump, beside which lay the fallen tree.  She obeyed mechanically, and he remained standing near her, with one foot lifted to the log; he leaned forward over her, and seemed to seize a physical advantage in the posture.  “From your own point of view, you would have no right to give up your undertaking if there was a chance of success in it.  You would have no more right to give up than a woman who had gone out as a missionary.”

“I don’t pretend to compare myself with such a woman; but I should have no more right to give up,” she answered, helpless against the logic of her fate, which he had somehow divined.

“Well, then, listen to me.  I can give you this chance.  Are you satisfied that with my advice you could have succeeded in Mrs. Maynard’s case?”

“Yes, I think so.  But what”—­

“I think so, too.  Don’t rise!”

His will overcame the impulse that had betrayed itself, and she sank back to her seat.  “I offer you my advice from this time forward; I offer you my help.”

“That is very good of you,” she murmured; “and I appreciate your generosity more than I can say.  I know the prejudice you must have had to overcome in regard to women physicians before you could bring yourself to do this; and I know how you must have despised me for failing in my attempt, and giving myself up to my feeble temperament.  But”—­

“Oh, we won’t speak of all that,” he interrupted.  “Of course I felt the prejudice against women entering the profession which we all feel; it was ridiculous and disgusting to me till I saw you.  I won’t urge you from any personal motive to accept my offer.  But I know that if you do you can realize all your hopes of usefulness; and I ask you to consider that certainly.  But you know the only way it could be done.”