ment or to anything he had just heard. What He saw was a picture that had come into his mind many times in the last two years, a picture that had etched itself upon his brain. It was a picture of a snow-bound world, of a little hut, of a certain Captain Oates taking a “little walk” out into that undiscovered country, and of a certain Captain Scott, and his friends Wilson and Bowers, left behind to die composing a story that would never die.
He turned back to the doctor and dropped into the chair facing him.
“Alleyne, it’s this way. If I have the operation, my wife will find out. She thinks now that I have indigestion. She wants to go to the war, and I want her to go. She must not know what is the matter with me if I live. So unless you will guarantee to finish me I won’t have the operation.”
They looked at each other, and the doctor put this story among the small collection of things he liked to think about when he got despairful of the human race.
“Barrington, I might agree that your life is in your own hands, but it isn’t in mine. I couldn’t do it yet, not with as much left to you as I think there is. If it came to the last weeks and one could be pretty certain there was nothing left but pain—well, I won’t say. But you are asking too much of me now.”
Dane stood up. “All right. Then I won’t have it. I can stick it out for a while—I hear you are going to the front, Doctor?”
The surgeon looked up at him. “Yes, I go in about two weeks.”
“As soon as that? I wish I could have gone and ended it that way. I’m going to stay here two or three days to fix up some business. If you have time to dine ———”
“I shall make time with pleasure.”
