You can shoot me, Doc, if you don't think I'm a-doing the right thing by her in every way, shape and manner." "She's too _good_--it's an impossible thing." Sim Gage's face was lifted, seriously.

"Doc, you know mighty well that's true, and so do I--she's plumb too good for me.

But it ain't me done all the thinking." "Didn't you ask her about it ?" "It kind of come around." Doctor Barnes rose and paced rapidly up and down within the narrow confines of his office.

"You _do_ love her, don't you ?" Sim Gage for the first time in his life felt the secret quick of his simple, sensitive soul cut open and exposed to gaze.

Not even the medical man before him could fail of sudden pity at witnessing what was written on his face---all the dignity, the simplicity, the reticence, all the bashfulness of a man brought up helplessly against the knife.
He could not--or perhaps would not--answer such a question even from the man before him, whom he suddenly had come to trust and respect as a being superior to himself.
But Allen Barnes was the pitiless surgeon now.