“You mean for him to go to his wife——­”

“Yes.”

“He has told us of this, and has offered to do it.  We are of the opinion that it would be a grave mistake.”

“It has been three weeks since the birth of the baby,” I said.  “Surely all danger of fever is past.  I will grant you that if it were a question of telling her deliberately, it might be better to put it off for a while.  I would have been willing to wait for months, but for the fact that I dreaded something like the present situation.  Now that it has happened, surely it is best to use our opportunity while all of us are here and can persuade her to take the kindest attitude towards her husband.”

“Madam!” broke in Dr. Gibson. (He was having difficulty in controlling his excitement.) “You are asking us to overstep the bounds of our professional duty.  It is not for the physician to decide upon the attitude a wife should take toward her husband.”

“Dr. Gibson,” I replied, “that is what you propose to do, only you wish to conceal the fact.  You would force Mrs. van Tuiver to accept your opinion of what a wife’s duty is.”

Dr. Perrin took command once more.  “Our patient has asked for you, and she looks to you for guidance.  You must put aside your own convictions and think of her health.  You are the only person who can calm her, and surely it is your duty to do so!”

“I know that I might go in and lie again to my friend, but she knows too much to be deceived for very long.  You know what a mind she has—­a lawyer’s mind!  How can I persuade her that the nurses—­why, I do not even know what she heard the nurses say!”

“We have that all written down for you,” put in Dr. Perrin, quickly.

“You have their recollection of it, no doubt—­but suppose they have forgotten some of it?  Sylvia has not forgotten, you may be sure—­every word is burned with fire into her brain.  She has put with this everything she ever heard on the subject—­the experience of her friend, Harriet Atkinson-all that I’ve told her in the past about such things——­”

“Ah!” growled Dr. Gibson.  “That’s it!  If you had not meddled in the beginning——­”

“Now, now!” said the other, soothingly.  “You ask me to relieve you of the embarrassment of this matter.  I quite agree with Mrs. Abbott that there is too much ignorance about these things, but she must recognise, I am sure, that this is not the proper moment for enlightening Mrs. van Tuiver.”

“I do not recognise it at all,” I said.  “If her husband will go to her and tell her humbly and truthfully——­”

“You are talking madness!” cried the old man, breaking loose again.  “She would be hysterical—­she would regard him as something loathsome—­some kind of criminal——­”

“Of course she would be shocked,” I said, “but she has the coolest head of anyone I know—­I do not think of any man I would trust so fully to take a rational attitude in the end.  We can explain to her what extenuating circumstances there are, and she will have to recognise them.  She will see that we are considering her rights——­”