"Sometimes in operating for one disease we come on another, and then there's a lot of thinking to be done." The look in her face was quizzical, yet there was a strange, elusive gravity in her eyes, an almost pathetic appealing.

"If you were going to operate on me, what would it be for ?" she asked more flippantly than her face showed.
"Well, it's obscure, and the symptoms are not usual, but I should strike for the cancer love," he answered, with a direct look.
She flushed and changed on the instant.

"Is love a cancer ?" she asked.
All at once she felt sure that he read her real story, and something very like anger quickened in her.
"Unrequited love is," he answered deliberately.

"How do you know it is unrequited ?" she asked sharply.
"Well, I don't know it," he answered, dismayed by the look in her face.
"But I certainly hope I'm right.

I do, indeed." "And if you were right, what would you do--as a surgeon ?" she questioned, with an undertone of meaning.
"I would remove the cause of the disease." She came close and looked him straight in the eyes.