His fingers dropped abruptly upon Lucas’s wrist, and tightened upon it.  “That brother of yours that you’re so fond of, now if it were he, I could pull him out of the very jaws of hell.  He’d catch and hold.  But you—­you are too near the other place to care.  Say, you don’t care, do you, not a single red cent?  It’s all one to you—­under Providence—­whether you live or die.  And if I operated on you to-morrow you’d die—­not at once, but sooner or later—­from sheer lack of enthusiasm.  That’s my difficulty.  It’s too long a business.  You would never keep it up.”

Lucas did not immediately reply.  He lay in the stillness habitual to him, gazing with heavy eyes at the motes that danced in the sunshine.

“I guess I’m too old, doctor,” he said at last.  “But you are wrong in one sense.  I do care.  I don’t want to die at present.”

“Private reasons?” demanded Capper keenly.

“Not particularly.  You see, I am the head of the family.  I hold myself responsible.  My brothers want looking after, more or less.”

“Brothers!” sniffed Capper, with supreme contempt.  “That consideration wouldn’t keep you out of heaven.  It’s only another reason for holding back.”

“Exactly,” Lucas said quietly.  “I don’t know what Nap will say to me.  He will call me a shirker.  But on the whole, doctor, I think I must hold back a little longer.”

“He’d better let me hear him!” growled Capper.  “I wish to heaven you were married.  That’s the kernel of the difficulty.  You want a wife.  You’d be keen enough then.  I shouldn’t be afraid of your letting go when I wasn’t looking.”

“Ah!” Lucas said, faintly smiling.  “But what of the wife?”

“She’d be in her element,” maintained Capper stoutly.  “She’d be to you what the mainspring is to a watch, and glory in it.  Haven’t you seen such women?  I have, scores of ’em, ready made for the purpose.  No, you will only go through my treatment with a woman to hold you up.  It’s a process that needs the utmost vitality, the utmost courage, and—­something great to live for—­a motive power behind to push you on.  There’s only one motive power that I can think of strong enough to keep you moving.  And that is most unfortunately absent.  Find the woman, I tell you, find the woman!  And—­under Providence—­I’ll do the rest!”

He dropped back in his chair, cracking his fingers fiercely, his keen eyes narrowly observant of every shade of expression on his patient’s face.

Lucas was still smiling, but his eyes had grown absent.  He looked unutterably tired.

“Yes,” he said slowly at length.  “I am afraid you have asked the impossible of me now.  But, notwithstanding that, if I could see my way to it, I would place myself in your hands without reservation—­and take my chance.  There are times now and then—­now and then—­” his words quickened a little, “when a man would almost give the very soul out of his body to be at