Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/318

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left more open gaps in your life structure than you've got hands and arms to hold the bridges up with."

George winced, but the doctor never faltered.

"And you've also hell-paved at home. You were hell-paving when you did not tell your wife frankly the facts about your business. You should have had her sympathy when you got only her scorn. You hell-paved when you checked your beautiful wife with another man upon the golf-links as you might have checked a wet umbrella at a stand."

"Doctor!" roared the husband in pain. "I never did that. You know I never did it."

"You did something strangely like it," rebuked the specialist with a relentless driving home of his assertion by an unshaken glance of his level, blue eyes.

"No—no," protested George, sick to death with his distress and sick with any attempt at speculating upon the mistakes that had led to them, although it was himself that had asked it. "I'm wrong, but you're not right. Let's end this moralizing, and help me, Doctor, if you can. I just haven't learned the secret of holding a woman's love. What is that secret, Doctor?"

"If I knew, I could make a million dollars a day selling it in New York City alone," smiled the doctor. "If I knew, I could brighten the homes and lighten the hearts of half the men