“Were you always successful?”

“Yes; in every instance.”

Mr. Carlton breathed more freely.  After a pause, he said, his lips growing white as he spoke: 

“There will have to be an operation in this case?”

“It cannot, I fear, be avoided,” replied the doctor.

“There is one comfort,” said Mr. Carlton, rallying and speaking in a more cheerful voice.  “The tumor is small and superficial in character.  The knife will not have to go very deep among the veins and arteries.”

Doctor Hillhouse did not correct his error.

“How long will it take?” queried the anxious husband, to whom the thought of cutting down into the tender flesh of his wife was so painful that it completely unmanned him.

“Not very long,” answered the doctor.

“Ten minutes?”

“Yes, or maybe a little longer.”

“She will feel no pain?”

“None.”

“Nor be conscious of what you are doing?”

“She will be as much in oblivion as a sleeping infant,” replied the doctor.

Mr. Carlton turned from Dr. Hillhouse and walked the whole length of the parlor twice, then stood still, and said, with painful impressiveness: 

“Doctor, I place her in your hands.  She is ready for anything we may decide upon as best.”

He stopped and turned partly away to hide his feelings.  But recovering himself, and forcing a smile to his lips, he said: 

“To your professional eyes I show unmanly weakness.  But you must bear in mind how very dear she is to me.  It makes me shiver in every nerve to think of the knife going down into her tender flesh.  You might cut me to pieces, doctor, if that would save her.”

“Your fears exaggerate everything,” returned Doctor Hillhouse, in an assuring voice.  “She will go into a tranquil sleep, and while dreaming pleasant dreams we will quickly dissect out the tumor, and leave the freed organs to continue their healthy action under the old laws of unobstructed life.”

“When ought it to be done?” asked Mr. Carlton the tremor coming back into his voice.

“The sooner, the better, after an operation is decided upon,” answered the doctor.  “I will make another examination in about two weeks.  The changes that take place in that time will help me to a clearer decision than it is possible to arrive at now.”

After a lapse of two weeks Doctor Hillhouse, in company with another surgeon, made a second examination.  What his conclusions were will appear in the following conversation held with Dr. Angier.

“The tumor is not of a malignant character,” Doctor Hillhouse replied, in answer to his assistant’s inquiry.  “But it is larger than I at first suspected and is growing very rapidly.  From a slight suffusion of Mrs. Carlton’s face which I did not observe at any previous visit, it is evident that the tumor is beginning to press upon the carotids.  Serious displacements of blood-vessels, nerves, glands and muscles must soon occur if this growth goes on.”