"Listen to
me." And in a voice trembling with passion, he read: "'I have
watched the spectacle of an unfortunate young woman, turned into
a veritable monster by means of a syphilitic infection. Her
face, or rather let me say what was left of her face, was nothing
but a flat surface seamed with scars.'"
George covered his face, exclaiming, "Enough, sir! Have mercy!"
But the other cried, "No, no! I will go to the very end. I have
a duty to perform, and I will not be stopped by the sensibility
of your nerves."
He went on reading: "'Of the upper lip not a trace was left; the
ridge of the upper gums appeared perfectly bare.'" But then at
the young man's protests, his resolution failed him. "Come," he
said, "I will stop. I am sorry for you--you who accept for
another person, for the woman you say you love, the chance of a
disease which you cannot even endure to hear described. Now,
from whom did that woman get syphilis? It is not I who am
speaking, it is the book. 'From a miserable scoundrel who was
not afraid to enter into matrimony when he had a secondary
eruption.' All that was established later on--'and who,
moreover, had thought it best not to let his wife be treated for
fear of awakening her suspicions!'"
The doctor closed the book with a bang. "What that man has done,
sir, is what you want to do."
George was edging toward the door; he could no longer look the
doctor in the eye. "I should deserve all those epithets and
still more brutal ones if I should marry, knowing that my
marriage would cause such horrors.
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