Striving against the awe that would
steal over me, looking into that solemn
face, fixed by those deep still eyes, hearing
that solemn voice, I said, with brusque
impatience:

"I have told you my time is valuable.
If you wish me to do anything, at once tell
me what."

"Have you not read the letter I
brought?"

"I have; but that explains nothing."

"My child is lame."

"That much I know."

"I am ready to answer any questions
about what you do not know."

Then I questioned her as to the nature,
extent, and what she thought probable
cause, of her child's lameness. She answered
always in few, fit words. I examined the
child: she watching me with those deep,
still eyes of hers. My heightened colour,
my increasing animation, my eager looks,
seemed to stir her a little.

My interest was thoroughly roused. This
was exactly such a case as we desired to
experiment upon; a case in which to try
a new operation, on the success of which,
under fair conditions, I was ready to stake
all I cared for in life. She, with that
monstrous egotism of maternity, mistook
me so far as that she took my interest to be
concentrated on this one sufferer.

"Can she be cured?" was asked so
hungrily by the whole face that there was
no need for the lips to form the words.

"Yes, yes, yes!" I answered, with joyous
triumphant confidence. " She can be
cured! She shall be! She shall walk as
well as the best of us!"

Before I knew what was happening—
not that there was any quickness of
movement, but that I was utterly unprepared
for any such demonstration—the woman
was on her knees at my feet. With one
hand she held the child; with the other
she had taken my hand, on which she
pressed her lips.

There was a speechless rapture over her
face, and the most exquisite soft flush upon
it, as she did this.

A queer feeling came over me, as I
awkwardly withdrew my hand—my hand
that for a long time afterwards tingled
with consciousness of the touch of the
woman's lips.

She rose, with no awkwardness, no
haste; reseated herself, bent over, and
kissed her child.

The child had been always watching
us, its soft serious unchildlike eyes fixed
sometimes on me, and sometimes on its
mother. I had never before, and have
never since, seen anything like that child's
eyes. They—but why voluntarily recal
them, when the effort of my life for so
long, was to keep them from always floating
before me!

Suddenly the woman's face resumed its
deadly pallor.

"Will it be very painful?" she asked.

"That is as you will."

"What do you mean?"

I explained. It was my advice that she
should let her child be put to sleep with
the then newly-discovered agent,
chloroform.

"Is there danger in it?"

"None—if the stuff is carefully
administered, as, I need not say, it shall be to
your child. You can understand how
difficult it is to keep a child still enough
under pain, to give an operator a fair
chance."

"It would be difficult with any other
child, perhaps: with mine it is not difficult.
She is so docile, so patient: she would
keep still, and bear, uncomplainingly,
anything I asked her to bear. She has already
undergone great agony from a fruitless
attempt at cure. But, of course, if, indeed,
there is no danger, I would wish"—here
she paused—" oh the weak folly of words!
to save my darling pain."

"Do you judge your child to have a
good constitution? The extreme debility
you speak of, is preternatural."

She answered me eagerly, assuring me
that her child, except for this lameness,
which she considered to be not the result
of constitutional disease but of an
accident, had always had perfect health. She
added:

"You are too young for me to tell my
story to, or I might, by the circumstances
of her birth, account to you for her extreme
docility."

I then questioned her as to what had
been done in attempt to cure the child, and
I blamed her for not having at first come
to us.

With perfect simplicity she gave me the
incredible answer that she had never, till
a few weeks since, heard of " us." Then,
when she had replied to all my questions,
seeming to win confidence in me, because
of my confidence in cure, she spoke to me,
with quiet intensity, of the child's peculiar
preciousness to her.

To this I listened, or seemed to listen,
patiently.