his stomach! Hounded by his stomach! Made or marred by his stomach! To think that that ugly uninteresting organ, a mess of a place, should be one’s dictator, a thing made beyond one’s control, ruined in one’s youth beyond one’s control! Ugh! Excuse me, Doc. I’ve faced it long enough. I ought to be used to the idea.”
He walked to the window and looked out again before turning back.
“I say, Doc. You must promise me something.”
“Yes?”
“You mustn’t hint this to a soul. Under no circumstances must Valerie get a suspicion of it. She thinks I’ve got indigestion. You promise?”
“If you wish it, certainly.”
“I more than wish it, I insist on it.” He went on feeling a relief in talking to someone remote like the doctor. “You see, she wants to go to the war, and I want her to go. I particularly want her to get away now before I get any worse. If she knew of this, thought my days were limited, she’d think it her duty to stay by me to the end. She’s so damned conscientious. And women, some women, have a ghastly capacity for self-sacrifice, and then they grow to hate the thing they have sacrificed themselves for. Many wives have told me that. And perhaps she would, and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t stand having her about me if she knew. I should be driven to end it. I shall do that some day when I can’t stick it any longer. But she must get away. And then one has no right to impose such a thing as cancer in the stomach on any human soul—don’t pity me, Doc; that’s the last thing on earth I can stand ———”
“God damn you, I’m not pitying you, Barrington.”
Dane smiled at him.
“I don’t know that you’ve got cancer. And if you
