I tell you unhesitatingly that if Doris Martin didn't exist, Adelaide Melhuish would be alive now.

That, as a thesis, is nearly as certain a thing as that the sun will rise to-morrow.

I go farther, and hazard the guess, not the fixed belief, though my guesses are usually borne out by events, that if Doris Martin had not been in this garden at half past ten on Monday night, Adelaide Melhuish would not have been killed some twenty minutes later.

It is useless for you to fume and rage in vain effort to disprove either of these presumptive facts.

You are simply beating the air.