Asher.  Remember what?

Dr. Jonathan.  If his life is saved, you will be called upon to make a sacrifice, to do your part.

Asher.  My part?

Dr. Jonathan.  Yes.  What I have given him—­the medicine—­is only half the battle—­should it succeed.  My laboratory experiments were only completed last night.

Asher.  This is what you have been working on?

Dr. Jonathan.  It happens to be.  But I have had no chance to test it —­except on animals.  I meant to have gone to a war hospital in New York today.  If it works, then we shall have to try the rest of the experiment,—­your half of it.

Asher.  What’s that?

Dr. Jonathan.  You probably noticed that George avoided you.

Asher.  It’s more than I can bear.  You know what we’ve been to each other.  If he should die—­feeling that way—!

Dr. Jonathan.  George hasn’t lost his affection for you; if it were so, we shouldn’t have that symptom.  I will tell you, briefly, my theory of the case.  But first let me say, in justice to Frye, that he was in no position to know certain facts that give the clue to George’s condition the mental history.

Asher.  I don’t understand.

Dr. Jonathan.  The day he left home, for France, certain things happened to him to arouse his sympathy with what we call working people, their lives and aspirations.  As you know, George has a very human side,—­he loves his fellow men.  He’d never thought of these things before.  He went with them, naturally, to you, and I infer that you suppressed him!

Asher.  I told him I couldn’t discuss certain aspects.  His emotional state troubled me,—­he was going away, and I imagined he would get over it.

Dr. Jonathan.  He didn’t get over it.  It was an emotional crisis.  He left home with a conflict in his mind,—­a conflict between his affection for you and that which he had suddenly come to see was right.  I mean, right for today, for the year and hour in which we are living.  This question of the emancipation of labour began a hundred years ago, with the introduction of machinery and the rise of modern industry, and in this war it has come to a head.  Well, as the time approached for George to risk his life for his new beliefs, his mental conflict deepened.  He talked with other young men who believed they were fighting for the same cause.  And then—­it must have been shortly before he was wounded—­he wrote you that appeal.

Asher.  The letter I read to you!