George’s heart ached for him as Warren suddenly covered his face with his hands.  Warren had always been the adored younger brother to him, Warren’s wonderful fingers over the surgical table, a miracle that gave their owner the right to claim whatever human weaknesses and failings he might, as a balance.  George had never thought him perfect, as so much of the world thought him; to George, Warren had always been a little more than perfect, a machine of inspired surgery, underbalanced in many ways that in this one supreme way he might be more than human.  George had to struggle for what he achieved; Warren achieved by divine right.  The women were in the right of it now, George conceded, they had the argument.  But of course they didn’t understand—­a thing like that had nothing to do with Warren’s wife; Rachael wasn’t brought into the question at all.  And Lord! when all was said and done Warren was Warren, and professionally the biggest figure in George’s world.

“I don’t suppose you feel like taking Hudson’s work?” said George now.  “He’s crazy to get away, and he was telling me yesterday that he didn’t see himself breaking out of it.  Mrs. Hudson wants to go to her own people, in Montreal, and I suppose Jack would be glad to go, too.”

“Take it in a minute!” Warren said, his whole expression changing.  “Of course I’ll take it.  I’m going to spend this afternoon getting things into shape at the house, and I think I’ll drop round at the hospital about five.  But I can start right in to-morrow.”

“It isn’t too much?” George asked affectionately.

“Too much?  It’s the only thing that will save my reason, I think,” Warren answered, and after that George said no more.

The two men lunched together, and dined together, five times a week, with a curious change from old times:  it was Warren who listened, and George who did the talking now.  They talked of cases chiefly, for Warren was working day and night, and thought of little else than his work; but once or twice, as September waned, and October moved toward its close, there burst from him an occasional inquiry as to his wife.

“Will she ever forgive me, George?” Warren asked one cool autumn dawning when the two men were walking away from the hospital under the fading stars.  Warren had commenced an operation just before midnight, it was only concluded now, and George, who had remained beside him for sheer admiration of his daring and his skill, had suggested that they walk for a while, and shake off the atmosphere of ether and of pain.

“It’s a time like this I miss her,” Warren said.  “I took it all for granted, then.  But after such a night as this, when I would go home in those first years, and creep into bed, she was never too sleepy to rouse and ask me how the case went, she never failed to see that the house was quiet the next morning, and she’d bring in my tray herself—­Lord, a woman like that, waiting on me!”