The hand with the gleaming, keen-edged knife had been offered against it again and again, but the stroke had never fallen, for always there stood between it and the surgeon who would slay the ravager, the resolute fear of Templeton Thorpe.

Time there was when the keen-edged knife might have vanquished or at least deprived it of its early venom, but the body of a physical coward housed it and denied admittance to all-comers.

Templeton Thorpe did not fear death.

He wanted to die, he implored his Maker to become his Destroyer.

The torture of a slow, inevitable death, however, was as nothing to the horror of the knife that is sharp and cold.
When he went upstairs with Wade on that memorable twenty-third of March, he said to his enemy: "Be quick, that's all I ask of you," and then prepared to wait as patiently as he could for the friendly end.
From that day on, he was to the eyes of the world what he had long been to himself in secret: a sick man without hope.