6 Bessie, languidly glancing through her midday mail some five days later, uttered a slight exclamation as she withdrew her fingertip from the flap of the envelope she had begun to open. It was a black, sleety day, with an east wind bowing the trees beyond the drenched window panes, and the two friends after luncheon had withdrawn to the library where Justine sat writing notes for Bessie, while the latter lay back in her arm-chair, in the state of dreamlessnessness into which she always sunk when not under the stimulus of amusement or exercise. She sat suddenly upright as her eyes fell on the letter. I beg your pardon, I thought it was for me, she said, holding it out to Justine. The latter reddened as she glanced at the superscription. It had not occurred to her that Amherst would reply to her appeal. She had pictured him springing on the first northbound train, perhaps not even pausing to announce his return to his wife, and to receive his letter under Bessie's eye was undeniably embarrassing, since Justine felt the necessity of keeping her intervention secret. But under Bessie's eye she certainly was. It continued to rest on her curiously, speculatively, with an underglaim of malicious significance.   The latter, after a moment's pause, broke the seal and read. Milfield, Georgia. My dear Miss Brent, your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it, but I don't know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will not ask me to return. Well, under present conditions, that seems to me a sufficient reason for staying away. Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me that day. I have made no binding arrangement here, nothing to involve my future action, and I have done this solely because you asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value your advice and what strong reasons I must have for not following it now. I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I wish I could show Sicily some of the birds down here. Yours faithfully, John Amherst. Please don't let my wife ride impulse. Latent under Justine's acute consciousness of what this letter meant was the sense of Bessie's inferences and conjectures. She could feel them actually piercing the page in her hand, like some hypersensitive visual organ to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in their endeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven-new what fantastic structure of intrigue, scrawling over the innocent page with burning evidences of perfidy and collusion. One thing became instantly clear to her. She must show the letter to Bessie. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle the consequences. There was the illusion to their talk in town. Well, she had told Bessie of that. But the careless reference to their woodland excursions. What might not Bessie in her present mood make of it? Justine's uppermost thought was of distress at the failure of her plan. Perhaps she might still have induced Amherst to come back, had it not been for this reason, but now that hope was destroyed. She raised her eyes and met Bessie's. Will you read it? She said, holding out the letter. Bessie received it with lifted eyebrows and a protestine murmur. But as she read, Justine saw the blood mount under her clear skin, invade the temples, the nape, even the little flower-like ears. Then it receded as suddenly, ebbing at last from the very lips, so that the smile with which she looked up from her reading was as white as if she had been under the stress of physical pain. So you have written my husband to come back. As you see. Bessie looked her straight in the eyes. I am very much obliged to you, extremely obliged. Justine met the look quietly, which means that you resent my interference. Oh, I leave you to call it that, Bessie mocked, tossing the letter down on the table at her side. Bessie, don't take it in that way. If I made a mistake, I did so with the hope of helping you. How can I stand by after all these months together and see you deliberately destroying your life without trying to stop you? The smile withered on Bessie's lips. It is very dear and good of you. I know you're never happy unless you're helping people. But in this case I can only repeat what my husband says. He and I don't often look at things in the same light, but I quite agree with him that the management of such matters is best left to, to the person's concerned. Justine hesitated. I might answer that, if you take that view. It was inconsistent of you to talk with me so openly. You've certainly made me feel that you wanted help. You've turned to me for it. But perhaps that does not justify my writing to Mr. Amherst without your knowing it. Bessie laughed. Ah, my dear, you knew that if you asked me the letter would never be sent? Perhaps I did, said Justine, simply. I was trying to help you against your will. Well, you see the result. Bessie laid a derisive touch on the letter. Do you understand now whose fault it is if I am alone? Justine faced her steadily. There is nothing in Mr. Amherst's letter to make me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring him back. Bessie raised a glittering face to her, all hardness and laughter. Such modesty, my dear, as if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed. She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with the petulant gesture. Don't mind me if I'm cross, but I've had a dose of preaching from Maria Ansel, and I don't know why my friends should treat me like a puppet without any preferences of my own, and press upon me a man who has done his best to show that he doesn't want me. As a matter of fact, he and I are luckily agreed on that point, too, and I'm afraid all the good advice in the world won't persuade us to change our opinion. Justine held her ground. If I believed that of either of you, I shouldn't have written. I should not be pleading with you now, and Mr. Amherst doesn't believe it either, they added after a pause, conscious of the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blow in the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic. Bessie's smile deepened into a sneer. I see you've talked me over thoroughly, and on his views I ought perhaps not to have risked an opinion. We have not talked you over, Justine exclaimed. Mr. Amherst could never talk of you in the way you think, and under the light staccato of Bessie's laugh she found resolution to add, it is not in that way that I know what he feels. Ah! I should be curious to hear, then. Justine turned to the letter which still lay between them. Will you read the last sentence again? The post-script, I mean. Bessie, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with the deprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than dispute about a trifle. The post-script, let me see. Don't let my wife ride impulse. Épouille, she murmured, dropping the page again. Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter, at first I thought so, the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt, so deeply that he will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thought when I first read it, but the post-script undoes it all.  It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her own relation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast aside all consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove to reach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attempt to help a wounded animal. For a moment Bessie seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up her cheek, her long lashes drooped.  After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feel competent to set everybody's affairs in order, but take my advice, my dear, don't ask me not to ride impulse. The pity froze on Justine's lip. She shrank back, cut to the quick. For a moment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of airy, wounding thoughts. Then Bessie's anger flagged, she gave one of her embarrassed half-laps, and turning back lay the deprecating touch on her friend's arm. I didn't mean that, Justine, but let us not talk now, I can't. Justine did not move. Every reaction could not come as quickly in her case, but she turned on Bessie, two eyes full of pardon, full of speechless pity, and Bessie received the look silently before she moved to the door and went out. Oh, poor thing, poor thing, Justine gasped as the door closed. She had already forgotten her own hurt. She was alone again with Bessie's sterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment. Then her eyes fell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them. The fatal letter. If it had not come at that unlucky moment, perhaps she might still have gained her end. She picked it up and re-read it. Yes, there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart might misconstrue, yet Bessie's last words had absolved her. Why had she not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly. For one miserable moment she had thought first of herself. Ah, that importunate, irrepressible self, the moi-aïsable of the Christian. If only one could tear it from one's breast. She had missed an opportunity, her last opportunity perhaps. By this time even a hundred hostile influences, cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might have drawn their freezing ring about Bessie's heart. Justine started up to follow her, then paused, recalling her last words, Let us not talk now, I can't. She had no right to intrude on that bleeding privacy. If the chance had been hers, she had lost it.  Presently she heard the clock strike, and true to her tireless instinct of activity, she lifted her head, took up her pen, and went on with the correspondence she had dropped. It was hard at first to collect her thoughts, or even to summon to her pen the conventional phrases that suffice for most of the notes. Looking for a word, she pushed aside her writing, and stared out at the salo-frozen landscape framed by the window at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunless blue showed through the driving wind-clouds, a hard sky and a hard ground, frost-bound, ringing earth under rigid, ice-mailed trees. As Justine looked out, shivering a little, she saw a woman's figure writing down the avenue toward the gate. The figure disappeared behind a clump of evergreens, showed again farther down, through the boughs of a skeleton beach, and revealed itself in the next open space as Bessie. Bessie in the saddle, on a day of glaring frost, when no horse could keep his footing out of a walk. Justine went to the window and strained her eyes for a confirming glimpse. Yes, it was Bessie. There was no mistaking that light flexible figure, every line swaying true to the beat of the horse's stride. But Justine remembered that Bessie had not meant to ride, had countermanded her horse because of the bad going. Well, she was a perfect horsewoman and had no doubt chosen her surest-footed mount, probably the brown cob, Tony Lumpkin. But when did Tony's sides shine so bright through the leafless branches? And when did he sweep his rider on with such long free play of the hind quarters? Horse and rider shot into sight again, rounding the curve of the avenue near the gates. And in a break of sunlight Justine saw the glitter of chestnut flanks, and remembered that impulse was the only chestnut in the stables. She went back to her seat and continued riding. Bessie had left a formidable heap of bills and letters, and when this was demolished Justine had her own correspondence to dispatch. She had heard that morning from the matron of St. Elizabeth's. An interesting case was offered her, but she must come within two days. For the first few hours she had wavered, loathed to leave Lindbrook without some definite light on her friend's future. But now Amherst's letter had shed that light, or rather had deepened the obscurity, and she had no pretext for lingering on, where her uselessness had been so amply demonstrated. She wrote to the matron accepting the engagement, and the acceptance involved the writing of other letters, the general reorganizing of that minute polity, the life of Justine Brent. She smiled a little to think how easily she could be displaced and transplanted, how slender were her material impedimenta, how few her invisible bonds. She was as light and detachable as a dead leaf on the autumn breeze, yet she was in the season of sap and flower when there is life and song in the trees. But she did not think long of herself, for an undefinable anxiety ran through her thoughts like a black thread. It found expression now and then in the long glances she threw through the window, in her rising to consult the clock and compare her watch with it, in a nervous snatch of humming as she paced the room once or twice before going back to her desk. Why was Bessie so late? Dusk was falling already, the early end of the cold, slate-hued day. But Bessie always rode late. There was always a rational answer to Justine's irrational conjectures. It was the side of those chestnut flanks that tormented her. She knew of Bessie's previous struggles with the mare, but the indulging of idle apprehensions was not in her nature. And when the tea-tree came, and with it Sicily, sparkling from a gusty walk, and coral pink in her cloud of crinkled hair, Justine sprang up and cast off her cares. It cost her a pang again to see the lamp-slit and the curtains drawn, shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from that windswept frozen twilight through which Bessie rode alone. But the icy touch of the thought slipped from Justine's mind as she bent above the tea-tree, gravely measuring Sicily's milk into a grown-up tea-cup, hearing the confidential details of the child's day and capping them with banter and fantastic narrative. She was not sorry to go. Oh, no! The house had become a prison to her, with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Sicily would be bitter. She had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against her in the fire-light, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbing her knee. And then what happened, Justine? The door opened and someone came in to look at the fire. Justine, through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was Knowles and not one of the footmen, the proud Knowles who never mended the fires himself. As he passed out again, hovering slowly down the long room, she rose, leaving Sicily on the hearth-rug, and followed him to the door. As Mrs. Amherst not come in, she asked, not knowing why she wished to ask it out of the child's hearing. No, Miss, I looked in myself to see, thinking she might have come by the side-door. She may have gone up to her sitting-room. She's not upstairs. They both paused. Then Justine said, what horse was she riding? Impulse, Miss. The butler looked at his large, responsible watch. It's not late, he said, more to himself than to her. No. Has she been riding impulse lately? No, Miss, not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understood Mr. Amherst did not wish it. Justine went back to Sicily in the fairy-tale. As she took up the thread of the princess's adventures, she asked herself why she had ever had any hope of helping Bessie. The seeds of disaster were in the poor creature's soul. Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out of herself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magnetic center of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core of soft-fibred natures. As she had answered her husband's previous appeal by her flight to the woman he disliked, so she answered this one by riding the horse he feared. Justine's last delusions crumbled. The distance between two such natures was unspanable. Amherst had done well to remain away, and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back to his side. The governess came to claim Sicily. One of the footmen came to put another log on the fire. Then the rite of removing the tea-table was majestically performed, the ceremonial that had so often jarred on Amherst's nerves. As she watched it, Justine had a vague sense of the immutability of the household routine. A queer odd feeling that, whatever happened, a machine so perfectly adjusted would work on inexorably like a natural law. She rose to look out of the window, staring vainly into blackness between the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing the writing-table, she noticed that Sicily's eruption had made her forget to post her letters, an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock told her that she was not too late for the mail, reminding her at the same time that it was scarcely three hours since Bessie had started on her ride. She saw the foolishness of her fears. Even in winter Bessie often rode for more than three hours, and now that the days were growing longer. Suddenly reassured, Justine went out into the hall, intending to carry her batch of letters to the red pillar-box by the door. As she did so, a cold blast struck her. Could it be that for once the faultless routine of the house had been relaxed that one of the servants had left the outer door ajar? She walked over to the vestibule. Yes, both doors were wide. The night rushed in on a vicious wind. As she pushed the vestibule door shut, she heard the dogs sniffing and whining on the threshold. She crossed the vestibule and heard voices and the tramping of feet in the darkness, then saw a lantern gleam. Suddenly nobles shot out of the night, the lantern struck on his bleached face. Justine, stepping back, pressed the electric button in the wall, and the wide door step was abruptly illuminated, with its huddled, pushing, heavily breathing group, black figures writhing out of darkness, strange faces distorted in the glare. Bessie, she cried and sprang forward, but suddenly Wyant was before her. His hand on her arm, and as the dreadful group struggled by into the hall, he froze her to him with a whisper, the spine. CHAPTER XXVI Within Justine there was a moment's darkness, then, like terrors struck workers rallying to their tasks, every faculty was again at its post, receiving and transmitting signals, taking observations, anticipating orders, making her brain ring with the hum of a controlled activity. She had known the sensation before, the transmuting of terror and pity into this miraculous lucidity of thought and action, but never had it snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge now, for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend them firmly to its service. Wyant seconded her well after a moment's ague fit of fear. She pitied and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional self-command. Through the first hours they worked shoulder to shoulder, conscious of each other only as of kindred will-powers, stretched to the utmost tension of discernment and activity, and hardly needing speech or look to further their swift cooperation. It was thus that she had known him in the hospital, in the heat of his youthful zeal, the doctor she liked best to work with because no other so tempered ardor with judgment. The great surgeon, arriving from town at midnight, confirmed his diagnosis. There was undoubted injury to the spine. Other consultants were summoned in haste, and in the winter dawn the verdict was pronounced, a fractured vertebra and possibly lesion of the cord. Justine got a moment alone when the surgeons returned to the sick-room. Other nurses were there now, capped, aproned, quickly and silently unpacking their appliances.  Oh, if only the crawling hours could bring amherst. It was strange that there was no telegram yet. No, not strange, after all, since it was barely six in the morning, and her message had not been dispatched till seven the night before. It was not unlikely that, in that little southern settlement, the telegraph office closed at six. She stood in Bessie's sitting-room, her forehead pressed to the window-pane, her eyes straining out into the thin February darkness through which the morning stars swam white. As soon as she had yielded her place to the other nurses, her nervous tension relaxed, and she hung again above the deeps of anguish, terrified and weak. In a moment the necessity for action would snatch her back to affirm footing. Her thoughts would clear. Her will affirm itself. All the wheels of the complex machine resumed their functions. But now she felt only the horror. She knew so well what was going on in the next room. Dr. Garford, the great surgeon, who had known her at St. Elizabeth's, had evidently expected her to take command of the nurses he had brought from town. But there were enough without her, and there were other cares which, for the moment, she only could assume. The dispatching of messages to the scattered family, the incessant telephoning and telegraphing to town, the general guidance of the old, swinging rudderless in the tide of disaster. Sicily, above all, must be watched over and guarded from alarm. The little governess, reduced to a twittering heap of fears, had been quarantined in a distant room till reason returned to her, and the child, meanwhile, slept quietly in the old nurse's care.  Other duties would press thick on the heels of this. Her feet were already on the threshold, but, meanwhile, she could only follow in imagination what was going on in the other room. She had often thought, with dread of such a contingency, she always sympathized too much with her patients. She knew it was the joint in her armor. Her quick, gushing pity lay too near that professional exterior which she had managed to undo with such a bright glaze of insensibility that some sentimental patients, without much the matter, had been known to call her a little hard. How, then, should she steer herself if it fell to her lot to witness a cruel accident to someone she loved, and to have to perform in nurse's duties steadily, expertly, unflinchingly, while every fiber was torn with inward anguish? She knew the horror of it now, and she knew also that her self-enforced exile from the sick room was a hundred times worse. To stand there, knowing, with each tick of the clock, what was being said and done within, how the great luxurious room, with its pale draperies and scented cushions, and the hundred pretty trifles strewing the lace-toilet table, and the delicate old furniture, was being swept bare, cleared for action like a ship's deck, drearily garnished with rows of instruments, rolls of medicated cotton, oiled silk, bottles, bandages, water-pillows, all the grim paraphernalia of the awful rites of pain.  This was worse than anything she had ever dreamed. She knew that the final verdict could not be pronounced till the operation which was about to take place should reveal the extent of the injury to the spine. Bessie, in falling, must have struck on the back of her head and shoulders, and it was but too probable that the fractured vertebra had caused a bruise, if not a lesion of the spinal cord. In that case paralysis was certain, and a slow, crawling death the most inevitable outcome. There had been cases, of course, Justine's professional memory evoked them, cases of so-called recovery, where actual death was kept at bay, a semblance of life preserved for years in the poor, petrified body. But the mind shrank from such a fate for Bessie, and it might still be that the injury to the spine was not grave, though, here again, the fracturing of the fourth vertebra was ominous. The door opened and someone came in from the inner room, wiant, in search of an instrument case. Justine turned, and they looked at each other. It will be now? Yes. Dr. Garford asked if there was no one you could send for. No one, but Mr. Tredegar and the Halford Gaines's. They'll be here this evening, I suppose. They exchanged a discouraged glance, knowing how little difference the presence of the Halford Gaines's would make. He wanted to know if there was no telegram from Amherst. No. Then they mean to begin. A nurse maid appeared in the doorway. Miss Sicily, she said, and Justine bounded upstairs. The day's work had begun, from Sicily to the governess, from the governess to the housekeeper, from the telephone to the writing-table. Justine vibrated back and forth, quick, noiseless, self-possessed, sobering, guiding, controlling her confused and panic-stricken It seemed to her that half the day had elapsed before the telegraph office at Lindbrook opened. She was at the telephone at the stroke of the hour. No telegram? Only one. A message from Halford Gaines. Arrive at eight to-night. Amherst was still silent. Was there a difference of time to be allowed for? She tried to remember to calculate, but her brain was too crowded with other thoughts. She turned away from the instrument, discouraged. Whenever she had time to think, she was overwhelmed by the weight of her solitude. Mr. Langhope was in Egypt, accessible only through a London banker. Mrs. Ansel presumably wandering on the Continent. Her cables might not reach them for days, and among the throng of Lindbrook habituaries she knew not to whom to turn. To loose the Telfer tribe and Mrs. Carbury upon that stricken house, her thought revolted from it, and she was thankful to know that February had dispersed their migratory flock to southern shores. But if only Amherst would come. Sicily and the tranquilized governess had been dispatched on a walk with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of the servants with the telegram. She tore it open with a great throb of relief. It was her own message to Amherst, a dress unknown. Had she misdirected it then, in that first blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no, there was the name of the town before her, Millfield, Georgia, the same name as in his letter. She had made no mistake, but he was gone, gone and without leaving an address. For a moment her tired mind refused to work. Then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again and rang up the telegraph office. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills, of whose very name she was ignorant, inquiring where Amherst was and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile, but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs. The verdict had been pronounced, dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no questions asked to the future. She knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate signs of a fatal ending. The patient had rallied well and the general conditions were not unfavorable. You have heard from Mr. Amherst? Dr. Garford concluded. Not yet. He may be traveling, Justine faltered, unwilling to say that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke there was a tap on the door and a folded paper was handed in. A telegram telephoned from the village. Amherst, gone South America to study possibilities, cotton growing, have cabled our correspondent Buenos Aires. Concealment was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the surgeon. Ah, and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mr. Amherst's papers. I think not. No. Well, we must keep her alive, Wyant. Yes, sir. At dusk Justine sat in the library waiting for Sicily to be brought to her. A lull had descended on the house. A new order developed out of the morning's chaos. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the machinery of life was carried on. And Justine caught in one of the pauses of inaction, which she had fought off since morning, was reliving for the hundredth time her few moments at Bessie's bedside. She had been summoned in the course of the afternoon and, stealing into the darkened room, had bent over the bed while the nurses noiselessly withdrew. There lay the white face, which had been burnt into her inward vision, the motionless body, and the heads stirring ceaselessly, as though to release the agitation of the imprisoned limbs.  Am I going to die, Justine? No. The pain is so awful. It will pass. You will sleep. Sicily. She has gone for a walk. You'll see her presently. The eyes faded, releasing Justine. She stole away and the nurses came back. Bessie had spoken of Sicily, but not a word of her husband. Perhaps her poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name. Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer, had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced, unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit pledge. The pledge not to break definitely with Lindbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to retrace a vague memory of some illusion to the cotton-growing capabilities of the region. Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking of the world's area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him off on such an exploration? Mere unrest, perhaps. The intolerable burden of his useless life? The questions spun round and round in her head, weary, profitless, yet persistent. It was a relief when Cicely came. A relief to measure out the cambrick tea, to make the terrier bag for gingerbread, even to take up the thread of the interrupted fairy tale. Though, through it all, she was wrung by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot of Bessie's horse. The day passed. The hands of the clocks moved. Food was cooked and served. Blinds were drawn up or down, lamps lit and fires renewed. All these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void where nothing happened, nothing would ever happen. And now Cicely was in bed. The last long-distance call was answered. The last orders to kitchen and stable had been dispatched. Wyant had stolen down to her with his hourly report, no change, and she was waiting in the library for the Gaines's. Carriage wheels on the gravel. They were there at last. Justine started up and went into the hall. As she passed out of the library, the outer door opened, and the gusty night swooped in, as, at the same hour the day before, it had swooped in ahead of the dreadful procession, proceeding now the carriage full of the Hannaford relations. Mr. Gaines, red-glazed, brief and interrogatory, westy, small, nervous, ill at ease with his grief, and Mrs. Gaines, supreme in the possession of a consolatory yet funerial manner, and sinking on Justine's breast with a solemn whisper, have you sent for the clergyman? CHAPTER XXVII. The house was empty again. A week had passed since Bessie's accident, and friends and relations had dispersed. The household had fallen into its routine, the routine of sickness and silence, and once more the perfectly adjusted machine was working on, steadily and exorably like a natural law. So at least it seemed to Justine's nerves intolerably stretched at times on the rack of solitude, of suspense, of forebodings. She had been thankful when the Gaines has left, doubly thankful when a telegram from Bermuda declared Mrs. Carberry to be in despair at her inability to fly to Bessie's side, thankful even that Mr. Tredegar's professional engagements made it impossible for him to do more than come down every second or third day for a few hours. Yet, though in some ways it was a relief to be again in sole command, there were moments when the weight of responsibility and the inability to cry out her fears and her uncertainties seemed almost unendurable. Wyant was her chief reliance. He had risen so gallantly above his weakness, become again so completely the indefatigable worker of former days that she accused herself of injustice in ascribing to physical causes the vague eye and tremulous hand which might merely have betokened a passing access of nervous sensibility. Now at any rate he had his nerves so well under control and had shown such a grasp of the case and such marked executive capacity that on the third day after the accident Dr. Garford, withdrawing his own assistant, had left him in control at Lindbrook.  She had done this the more willingly because Bessie, who was now conscious for the greater part of the time, had asked for her once or twice and had seemed easier when she was in the room. But she still gave only occasional aid, relieving the other nurses when they dined or rested, but keeping herself partly free in order to have an eye on the household and give a few hours daily to Sicily. All this had become part of a system that already seemed as old as memory. She could hardly recall what life had been before the accident. The seven dreadful days seemed as long as the days of creation. Every morning she rose to the same report, no change, and every day passed without a word from Amherst. Minor news, of course, had come. Poor Mr. Langhope, at length overtaken at Wadi Haifa, was hastening back as fast as ship and rail could carry him. Mrs. Ansel anchored at Algiers with her invalid, cabled anxious inquiries, but still no word from Amherst. The correspondent at Buenos Aires had simply cabled, not here, will inquire. And since then, silence. Justine had taken to sitting in a small room beyond Amherst's bedroom, near enough to Bessie to be within call, yet accessible to the rest of the household. The walls were hung with old prints, and with two or three photographs of early Italian pictures, and in a low bookcase Amherst had put the books he had brought from Hannaford, the English poets, the Greek dramatists, some text books of biology and kindred subjects, and a few stray, well-worn volumes, Lecky's European morals, Carlisle's translation of Wilhelm Meister, Seneca, Epictetus, a German grammar, a pocket of bacon. It was unlike any other room at Lindbrook, even through her benumbing misery, Justine felt the relief of escaping there from the rest of the great, soulless house. Sometimes she took up one of the books and read a page or two, letting the beat of the verse lull her throbbing brain, or the strong words of stoic wisdom sink into her heart. And even when there was no time for these brief flights from reality, it soothed her to feel herself in the presence of great thoughts, to know that in this room among these books another restless, baffled mind had sought escape from the dusty answer of life. Her hours there made her sink less bitterly of Amherst, but also, alas, made her see more clearly the irreconcilable difference between the two natures she had striven to reunite. That which was the essence of life to one was a meaningless shadow to the other, and the gulf between them was too wide for the imagination of either to bridge. As she sat there on the seventh afternoon there was a knock on the door and Wyant entered. She had only time to notice that he was very pale. She had been struck once or twice with his look of sudden exhaustion, which passed as quickly as it came. Then she saw that he carried a telegram, and her mind flew back to its central anxiety. She grew pale herself as she read the message. He has been found at Coriantus. It will take him at least a month to get here. A month? Good God! And it may take Mr. Langhope longer. Their eyes met. It's too long, she asked. I don't know. I don't know. He shivered slightly, turning away into the window. Justine sat down to dash off messages to Mr. Tredagar in the Gaines's. Amherst's return must be made known at once. When she glanced up Wyant was standing near her. His air of intense weariness had passed, and he looked calm and ready for action. Shall I take these down? No. Ring, please. I want to ask you a few questions. The servant who answered the bell brought in a tea tray and Justine, having dispatched the telegrams, seated herself and began to pour out her tea. Food had been repugnant to her during the first anguished, unsettled days, but with the resumption of the nurse's systematic habits the nurse's punctual appetite returned. Every drop of energy must be husbanded now, and only sleep and nourishment could fill the empty cisterns. She held out a cup to Wyant, but he drew back with a gesture of aversion. Thanks, I'm not hungry.  No, no, I'm very well. She lifted her head, revived by the warm draft. The mechanical act of nourishment performed, her mind leapt back to the prospect of Amherst's return. A whole month before he reached Lindbrook. He had instructed her where news might find him on the way, but a whole month to wait. She looked at Wyant and they read each other's thoughts. It's a long time, he said. Yes. But Garford can do wonders, and she's very strong. Justine shuddered. Just so a skilled agent of the Inquisition might have spoken, calculating how much longer the power of suffering might be artificially preserved in a body broken on the wheel. How does she seem to you today? The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm. Yes, her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at times. Oh, she'll suffer, Wyant murmured. Of course the hypodermics can be increased. Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning? He is astonished at her strength. But there's no hope. I don't know why I ask. Hope? Wyant looked at her. You mean of what's called recovery, of deferring death indefinitely? She nodded. How can Garford tell? Or any one? We all know there have been cases where such an injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of those cases, but the biggest man couldn't say now. Justine hid her eyes. What a fate! Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent. And yet? And yet it's got to be. Science herself says so. Not for the patient, of course, but for herself. For unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn't it? The two creeds are at one. Justine murmured through her clasped hands. I wish she were not so strong. Yes. It's wonderful what those frail, petted bodies can stand. The fight is going to be a hard one. She rose with a shiver. I must go to Sicily. The rector of St. Anne's had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines' suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident, but supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission to the sick-room.  Her faith had never been associated with the graver moments of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all important that her nervous strength should be sustained, and the gravity of the situation kept from her, Mrs. Gaines yielded to the medical commands, consoled by the ready acquiescence of the rector. But before she left, she extracted a promise that he would call frequently at Lindbrook and wait his opportunity to say an uplifting word to Mrs. Amherst. The reverend Ernest Lind, who was a young man with more zeal and experience, deemed it his duty to obey this injunction to the letter, but hitherto he had had to content himself with a talk with the housekeeper, or a brief word on the doorstep from Wyant. Today, however, he had asked somewhat insistently for Miss Brent, and Justine, who was free at the moment, felt that she could not refuse to go down. She had seen him only in the pulpit when, once or twice, in Bessie's absence, she had taken Sisley to church. He struck her as a grave young man, with a fine voice but halting speech. His sermons were Ernest but ineffective. As he rose to meet her, she felt that she should like him better out of church. His glance was clear and honest, and there was a sweetness in his hesitating smile. I am sorry to seem persistent, but I heard you had news of Mr. Langhope, and I was anxious to know the particulars, he explained. Justine replied that her message had overtaken Mr. Langhope at Wadi Haifa, and that he had hoped to reach Alexandria in time to catch a steamer to Brindisi at the end of the week. Not till then, so it will be almost three weeks? As nearly as I can calculate a month. Director hesitated. And Mr. Amherst? He is coming back, too. Ah, you have heard? I'm glad of that. He will be here soon? No. He is in South America, at Buenos Aires. There will be no steamer for some days, and he may not get here till after Mr. Langhope. Mr. Lind looked at her kindly, with grave eyes that proffered help. This is terrible for you, Miss Brent. Yes, Justine answered simply. And Mrs. Amherst's condition? It is about the same. The doctors are hopeful. And they have not lost hope. She seems to keep her strength wonderfully. Yes, wonderfully. Mr. Lind paused, looking downward, and awkwardly turning his soft clerical hat in his large, kind-looking hands. One might almost see in it a dispensation. We should see one, Miss Brent. We? She glanced up apologetically, not quite sure that her tired mind had followed his meaning. We, I mean, who believe, that not one sparrow falls to the ground. He flushed, and went on in a more mundane tone. I am glad you have the hope of Mr. Langhope's arrival to keep you up. Modern science, thank heaven, can do such wonders in sustaining and prolonging life that, even if there is little chance of recovery, the faint spark may be nursed until—he paused again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly erect in her dark blue linen and nurses' cap, was examining him with an intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she had dropped on him in entering. In such cases, she said in a low tone, there is practically no chance of recovery. So I understand. Even if there were, it would probably be death in life, complete paralysis of the lower body. He shuddered. A dreadful fate.  Yes, and the struggle with death for the next few weeks must involve incessant suffering, frightful suffering, perhaps vainly. I feared so, he murmured, his kind face paling. Then why do you thank heaven that modern science has found such wonderful ways of prolonging life? He raised his head with a start and their eyes met. He saw that the nurse's face was pale and calm, almost judicial in its composure, and his self-position returned to him. As a Christian, he answered with his slow smile, I can hardly do otherwise. Justine continued to consider him thoughtfully. The men of the older generation, clergymen I mean, she went on in a low controlled voice, would of course take that view, must take it. But the conditions are so changed, so many undreamed of means of prolonging life, prolonging suffering, have been discovered and applied in the last few years, that I wondered, in my profession one often wonders. I understand, he rejoined sympathetically, forgetting his youth and his inexperience and the simple desire to bring solace to a troubled mind. I understand your feeling, but you need have no doubt. Human life is sacred, and the fact that, even in this materialistic age, science is continually struggling to preserve and prolong it shows, very beautifully I think, how all things work together to fulfill the Divine Will. Then you believe that the Divine Will delights in mere pain, mere meaningless animal suffering for its own sake? Surely not, but for the sake of the spiritual life that may be mysteriously wrung out of it. Justine bent her puzzled brows on him. I could understand that view of moral suffering, or even of physical pain, moderate enough to leave the mind clear, and to call forth qualities of endurance and renunciation, but where the body has been crushed to a pulp and the mind is no more than a machine for the registering of sense impressions, of physical anguish, of what use can such suffering be to its owner, or to the Divine Will? The young rector looked at her sadly, almost severely. There, Miss Brent, we touch on inscrutable things, and human reason must leave the answer to faith. Justine pondered. So that one may say Christianity recognizes no exceptions? None, none its authorized exponent pronounced emphatically. Then Christianity and science are agreed. She rose and the young rector, with visible reluctance stood up also. That again is one of the most striking evidences, he began, and then as the necessity of taking leave was forced upon him, he added appealingly, I understand your uncertainties, your questionings, and I wish I could have made my point clearer. Thank you, it is quite clear. The reasons of course are different, but the result is exactly the same. She held out her hand, smiling sadly on him, and with a sudden return of youth and self-consciousness he murmured shyly, I feel for you. The man in him yearning over her loneliness, though the pastor dared not press his help. End of Chapter 27. Book III. 28 of The Fruit of the Tree. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton. Book III, Chapter 28.  The rose-shaded lamp cast a tint of light on her face, and the dark circles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine was almost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope that was half anguished stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping the hand on the sheet. You feel better tonight? I breathe better. The words came brokenly, between long pauses, but without the hard agonized gasps of the previous night. That's a good sign, Justine paused, and then letting her fingers glide once or twice over the back of Bessie's hand. You know, dear, Mr. Amherst is coming, she leaned down to say. Bessie's eyes moved again, slowly, inscrutably. She had never asked for her husband. Soon, she whispered. He had started on a long journey to out-of-the-way places, to study something about cotton-growing. My message has just overtaken him, Justine explained. Bessie lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so long without speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back into the somnolent state that intervened between her moments of complete consciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again and her lips stirred. He will be long coming some days. How many? We can't tell yet. Silence again. Bessie's features seem to shrink into a kind of wax and quietude, as though her face were seen under clear water a long way down. And then as she lay thus without sound or movement, two tears forced themselves through her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Justine, bending close, wiped them away. Bessie. The wet lashes were raised and anguished look met her gaze. I—I can't bear it. But dear, it's a pain. Shant I die? Before? You may get well, Bessie. Justine felt her hand quiver. Walk again? Perhaps not that. This? I can't bear it. Her head drooped sideways, turning away toward the wall. Justine that night kept her vigil with an aching heart. The news of Amherst's return had produced no sign of happiness in his wife. The tears had been forced from her merely by the dread of being kept alive during the long days of pain before he came. The medical explanation might have been that repeated crises of intense physical anguish and the deep lassitude succeeding them had so overlaid all other feelings, or at least so benumbed their expression, that it was impossible to conjecture how Bessie's little, half-smothered spark of soul had really been affected by the news. But Justine did not believe in this argument. Her experience among the sick had convinced her, on the contrary, that the shafts of grief or joy will find a crack in the heaviest armor of physical pain, that the tiniest gleam of hope will light up depths of mental inhibition and somehow send a ray to the surface. It was true that Bessie had never known how to bear pain and that her own sensations had always formed the center of her universe. Yet for that very reason, if the thought of seeing Amherst had made her happier, it would have lifted, at least momentarily, the weight of death from her body. Justine at first had almost feared the contrary effect, feared that the moral depression might show itself in a lowering of physical resistance. But the body kept up its obstinate struggle against death, drawing strength from sources of vitality unsuspected in that frail envelope. The surgeon's report the next day was more favorable, and every day one from death pointed now to a faint chance of recovery. Such at least was Wyance's view. Dr. Garford and the consulting surgeons had not yet declared themselves, but the young doctor strung to the highest point of watchfulness, and constantly in attendance on the patient was tending toward a hopeful prognosis. The growing conviction spurred him to fresh efforts. At Dr. Garford's request he had temporarily handed over his Clifton practice to a young New York doctor in need of a change, and having installed himself at Lindbrook he gave up his days and nights to Mrs. Amherst's case. If anyone can save her Wyance will, Dr. Garford had declared to Justine when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons held their third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He had seen cases, they had all seen cases, but just at present the signs might point either way. Meanwhile Wyance's confidence was an invaluable asset toward the patient's chances of recovery. Prognosis in the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient. Contact with such faith had been known to work miracles. Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope, but whichever way the prognosis pointed she felt only a dull despair. She believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery. That conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyance's imagination, of his boyish ambition to achieve the impossible, and every hopeful symptom pointed, in her mind, only to a longer period of useless suffering. Her hours at Bessie's side deepened her revolt against the energies spent in the fight with death. Since Bessie had learned that her husband was returning, she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except for a gleam of tenderness now and then when Cicely was brought to her, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poor little flicker of consciousness were wholly centered in the contemplation of its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded, only that it was immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it. And what if she recovered, as they called it, if the flood tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What would life be to Bessie without movement? Thought would never set her blood flowing. Motion in her could only take the form of physical processes. Her love for Amherst was dead. Even if it flickered into life again, it could but put the spark to smoldering discords and resentments, and would her one uncontaminated sentiment, her affection for Cicely, suffice to reconcile her to the desolate half-life which was the utmost that science could hold out. Here again Justine's experience answered, no. She did not believe in Bessie's powers of moral recuperation. Her body seemed less near death than her spirit. Life had been poured out to her in generous measure, and she had spilled the precious draft. The few drops remaining in the cup could no longer renew her strength. Pity, not condemnation, profound, illimitable pity flowed from this conclusion of Justine's. To a compassionate heart there could be no sadder instance of the wastefulness of life than this struggle of the small, half-formed soul with a destiny too heavy for its strength. If Bessie had had any moral hope to fight for, every pang of suffering would have been worth enduring, but it was intolerable to witness the spectacle of her useless pain. Incessant commerce with such thoughts made, Justine, as the days passed, crave any escape from solitude, any contact with other ideas. Even the reappearance of Westie Gaines bringing a breath of common place conventional grief into the haunted silence of the house was a respite from her questionings. If it was hard to talk to him, to answer his enquiries, to assent to his platitudes, it was harder a thousand times to go on talking to herself. Mr. Tredegar's coming was a distinct relief. His dryness was like cottery to her wound. Mr. Tredegar undoubtedly grieved for Bessie, but his grief struck inward, exuding only now and then, through the fissures of his hard manner, in a touch of extra solemnity, the more labored rounding of a period. Yet on the whole it was his feeling that Justine felt her own to be most akin. If his stoic acceptance of the inevitable proceeded from the resolve to spare himself pain, that at least was a form of strength, an indication of character. She had never cared for the fluencies of invertebrate sentiment. Now on the evening of the day after her talk with Bessie, it was more than ever a solace to escape from the torment of her thoughts into the rarified air of Mr. Tredegar's presence. The day had been a bad one for the patient, and Justine's distress had been increased by the recede of a cable from Mr. Langhope, announcing that owing to delay in reaching Brindisi, he had missed the fast steamer from Cherbourg and would not arrive till four or five days later than he had expected. Mr. Tredegar, in response to her report, had announced his intention of coming down by a late train, and now he and Justine and Dr. Wyant, after dining together, were seated before the fire in the smoking-room. I take it then, Mr. Tredegar said, turning to Wyant, that the chances of her living to see her father are very slight. The young doctor raised his head eagerly. Not in my opinion, sir, unless unforeseen complications arise, I can almost promise to keep her alive for another month. I'm not afraid to call it six weeks. Hmm. Garford doesn't say so. No, Dr. Garford argues from precedent. And you? Mr. Tredegar's thin lips were visited by the ghost of a smile. Oh, I don't argue. I just feel my way, said Wyant imperturbably. And yet you don't hesitate to predict. No, I don't, sir, because the case, as I see it, presents certain definite indications. He began to enumerate them, cleverly avoiding the use of technicalities and trying to make his point clear by the use of simple illustration and analogy. It sickened Justine to listen to his passionate exposition. She had heard it so often. She believed in it so little. Mr. Tredegar turned a probing glance on him as he ended. Then, to-day even, you believe not only in the possibility of prolonging life, but of ultimate recovery. Wyant hesitated. I won't call it recovery to-day. Say, life indefinitely prolonged. And the paralysis? It might disappear after a few months or a few years. Such an outcome would be unusual. Exceptional. But then there are exceptions, and I'm straining every nerve to make this one. And the suffering, such as today's, for instance, is unavoidable? Unhappily. And bound to increase? Well, as the anesthetics lose their effect, there was a tap on the door, and one of the nurses entered to report to Wyant. He went out with her, and Justine was left with Mr. Tredegar. He turned to her thoughtfully. That young fellow seems sure of himself. You believe in him? Justine hesitated. Not in his expectation of recovery. No one does. But you think they can keep the poor child alive till Lang Hope and her husband get back? There was a moment's pause, then Justine murmured. It can be done, I think. Yes, it's horrible, said Mr. Tredegar suddenly, as if in answer to her thought. She looked up in surprise, and saw his eye resting on her with what seemed like a mist of sympathy on its vitreous surface. Her lips trembled, parting as if for speech, but she looked away without answering. These new devices for keeping people alive, Mr. Tredegar continued. They increased the suffering besides prolonging it. Yes, in some cases. In this case? I am afraid so. The lawyer drew out his fine camber cankerchief, and furtively wiped a slight dampness from his forehead. I wished to God she had been killed, he said. Justine lifted her head again, with an answering exclamation. Oh, yes. It's infernal, the time they can make it last. It's useless, Justine broke out. Useless? He turned his critical glance on her. Well, that's beside the point, since it's inevitable. She wavered a moment, but his words had loosened the bonds about her heart, and she could not check herself so suddenly. Why inevitable? Mr. Tredegar looked at her in surprise, as though wondering at so unprofessional an utterance from one who, under ordinary circumstances, showed the absolute self-control and submission of the well-disciplined nurse. Human life is sacred, he said sententiously. Ah, that must have been decreed by someone who had never suffered, Justine exclaimed. Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately. He evidently knew how to make allowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of her friend's suffering. Society decreed it, not one person, he corrected. Society, science, religion, she murmured as if to herself. Precisely. It's the universal consensus, the result of the world's accumulated experience. Cruel and individual instances, necessary for the general welfare. Of course your training has taught you all this, but I can understand that it's such a time. Yes, she said, rising wearily as Wyant came in. Her worst misery now was to have to discuss Bessie's condition with Wyant. To the young physician Bessie was no longer a suffering, agonizing creature. She was a case, a beautiful case. As the problem developed new intricacies, becoming more and more of a challenge to his faculties of observation and inference, Justine saw the abstract scientific passion supersede his personal feeling of pity. Though his professional skill made him exquisitely tender to the patient under his hands, he seemed hardly conscious that she was a woman who had befriended him, and whom he had so lately seen in the brightness of health and enjoyment. This view was normal enough. It was, as Justine knew, the ideal state of mind for the successful physician, in whom sympathy for the patient as an individual must often impede swift choice and unfaltering action. But what she shrank from was his resolve to save Bessie's life, a resolve fortified to the point of exasperation by the skepticism of the consulting surgeons, who saw in it only the youngster's natural desire to distinguish him by performing a feat which his elders deemed impossible. As the days dragged on and Bessie's sufferings increased, Justine longed for a protesting word from Dr. Garford or one of his colleagues. In her hospital experience she encountered cases where the useless agonies of death were mercifully shortened by the physician. Why was not this a case for such treatment? The answer was simple enough. In the first place it was the duty of the surgeons to keep their patient alive till her husband and her father could reach her, and secondly there was the faint elusive hope of so-called recovery, in which none of them believed, yet which they could not ignore in their treatment. The evening after Mr. Tredegar's departure, Wyant was sitting this forth at great length to Justine. Bessie had had a bad morning. The bronchial symptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increased her distress, and there had been at dawn a moment of weakness when it seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt and audacious use of stimulants, by a rapid marshalling of resources, a display of self-reliance and authority which Justine could not but admire as she mechanically seconded his efforts, the spark of life had been revived, and Bessie won back for fresh suffering. Yes, I say it can be done. Tonight I say it more than ever, Wyant exclaimed, pushing the disordered hair from his forehead and leaning toward Justine across the table on which their brief evening meal had been served. I say the way the heart has rallied proves that we've got more strength to draw on than any of them have been willing to admit. The breathing's better, too. If we can fight off the degenerative processes, and by George I believe we can—he looked up suddenly at Justine—with you to work with, I believe I could do anything.  You think with your hands, with every individual finger.  She felt a shudder of repulsion still over her tired body. It was not that she detected any note of personal admiration in his praise. He had commended her as the surgeon might commend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should be the instrument to serve such a purpose. That her skill, her promptness, her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, should be at the service of this implacable scientific passion. Ah, no, she could be silent no longer. She looked up at Wyant and their eyes met. Why do you do it? she asked. He stared, as if thinking that she referred to some special point in his treatment. Do what? It's so useless. You all know she must die. I know nothing of the kind, and even the others are not so sure today. He began to go over it all again, repeating his arguments, developing new theories, trying to force into her reluctant mind his own faith in the possibility of success.  When he paused she remained silent. Well, don't you believe me? he broke out with sudden asperity. I don't know. I can't tell. But as long as there's a doubt even, a doubt my way, and I'll show you there is if you'll give me time. How much time she murmured without shifting her gaze. That depends on ourselves, on you and me chiefly. That's what Garford admits. They can't do much now. They've got to leave the game to us. It's a question of incessant vigilance, of utilizing every hour, every moment. Times all I ask, and you can give it to me if anyone can. Under the challenge of his tone, Justine roaster her feet with a low murmur of fear. Ah, don't ask me. Don't ask you. I can't. I can't. Wyatt stood up also, turning on her in astonished glance. You can't What? Their eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination of her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength, restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf of self-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril nerved her to a last effort of dissimulation. I can't talk of it any longer, she faltered, letting her tears flow and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness. Wyatt looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plain physical evidences of exhaustion? Or was he merely disappointed in her, as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of her sex? You're overtired, he said, coldly. Take to-night to rest. Miss Mace can replace you for the next few hours, and I may need you more to-morrow. End of CHAPTER XXVIII. BOOK III. CHAPTER XXIX. Four more days had passed. Bessie seldom spoke when Justine was with her. She was wrapped in a thickening cloud of opiates, morphia by day, bromides, sulfenol, chloral hydrate at night. When the cloud broke and consciousness emerged, it was centered in the one acute point of bodily anguish. Darting throes of neuralgia, agonized oppression of the breath, the diffused misery of the whole helpless body, these were reducing their victim to a mere instrument on which pain played its incessant deadly variations. Once or twice she turned her dull eyes on Justine, breathing out, I want to die, as some inevitable lifting or readjusting thrilled her body with fresh pangs, but there were no signs of contact with the outer world. She had ceased even to ask for Sicily. And yet according to the doctors the patient held her own. Certain alarming symptoms had diminished, and while others persisted, the strength to fight them persisted too, with such strength to call on what fresh agonies were reserved for the poor body when the narcotics had lost their power. That was the question always before Justine. She never again betrayed her fears to Wyant. She carried out his orders with morbid precision, trembling lest any failure and efficiency should revive his suspicions. She hardly knew what she feared his suspecting. She only had a confused sense that they were enemies and that she was the weaker of the two. And then the anesthetics began to fail. It was the sixteenth day since the accident, and the resources of alleviation were almost exhausted. It was not sure even now that Bessie was going to die, and she was certainly going to suffer a long time. Wyant seemed hardly conscious of the increase of pain. His whole mind was fixed on the prognosis. What matter if the patient suffered, as long as he proved his case? That, of course, was not his way of putting it. In reality he did all he could to allay the pain, surpassed himself in new devices and experiments. But death confronted him implacably, claiming his due. So many hours robbed from him, so much tribute to pay, and Wyant, setting his teeth, fought on, and Bessie paid. Justine had begun to notice that it was hard for her to get a word alone with Dr. Garford. The other nurses were not in the way. It was Wyant who always contrived to be there. Perhaps she was unreasonable in seeing a special intention in his presence. It was natural enough that the two persons in charge of the case should confer together with their chief, but his persistence annoyed her, and she was glad when, one afternoon, the surgeon asked him to telephone an important message to town. As soon as the door had closed, Justine said to Dr. Garford, she is beginning to suffer terribly. He answered with the large impersonal gesture of the man to whom physical suffering has become a painful general fact of life, no longer divisible into individual cases. We are doing all we can.  Is there any hope? Another gesture, the fatalistic sweep of the lifted palms. The next ten days will tell. The fight is on, as Wyant says, and if anyone can do it, that young fellow can. There's stuff in him, and infernal ambition. Yes, but do you believe she can live? Dr. Garford smiled indulgently on such unprofessional insistence, but she was past wondering what they might all think of her. My dear Miss Brent, he said, I have reached the age when one always leaves the door open to the unexpected. As he spoke, a slight sound at her back made her turn. Wyant was behind her. He must have entered as she put her question, and he certainly could not have had time to descend the stairs, walk the length of the house, ring up New York, and deliver Dr. Garford's message. The same thought seemed to strike the surgeon. Hello, Wyant, he said. Line busy, said Wyant curtly. About this time Justine had given up her night vigils. She could no longer face the struggle of the dawn hour when life ebbs lowest, and since her duties extended beyond the sick-room she could fairly plead that she was more needed about the house by day. But Wyant protested. He wanted her most at the difficult hour. You know you're taking a chance from her, he said almost sternly. Oh, no! he looked at her searchingly. You don't feel up to it? No. He turned away with a slight shrug, but she knew he resented her defection. The day watches were miserable enough. It was the nineteenth day now, and Justine lay on the sofa in Amherst's sitting-room, trying to nerve herself for the nurse's summons. A page torn out of the calendar lay before her. She had been calculating again how many days must elapse before Mr. Langhope could arrive. Ten days. Ten days and ten nights, and the length of the nights was double. As for Amherst, it was impossible to set a date for his coming, for his steamer from Buenos Aires called at various ports on the way northward, and the length of her stay at each was dependent on the delivery of freight and on the dilatoriness of the South American official. She threw down the calendar and leaned back, pressing her hands to her temples. Oh, for a word with Amherst, he alone would have understood what she was undergoing. Mr. Langhope's coming would make no difference, or rather it would only increase the difficulty of the situation. Instinctively Justine felt that, though his heart would be rung by the side of Bessie's pain, his cry would be the familiar one, the traditional one. Keep her alive. Under his surface originality, his verbal audacities and ironies, Mr. Langhope was the creature of accepted forms, inherited opinions. He had never really thought for himself on any of the pressing problems of life. But Amherst was different. Close contact with many forms of wretchedness had freed him from the bondage of accepted opinion. He looked at life through no eyes but his own, and what he saw he confessed to seeing. He never tried to evade the consequences of his discoveries. Justine's remembrance flew back to their first meeting at Hannaford when his confidence in his own powers was still unshaken, his trust in others unimpaired. And gradually she began to relive each detail of their talk at Dillon's bedside. Her first impression of him as he walked down the ward, the first sound of his voice, her surprised sense of his authority, her almost involuntary submission to his will, then her thoughts passed on to their walk home from the hospital. She recalled his sober yet unsparing summary of the situation at Westmore, and the note of insight with which he touched on the hardships of the workers. Then word by word their talk about Dillon came back. Amherst's indignation and pity, his shudder of revolt at the man's doom. In your work don't you ever feel tempted to set a poor devil free? And then, after her conventional murmur of protest, to save what when all the good of life is gone? To distract her thoughts she stretched her hand toward the bookcase, taking out the first volume in reach, the little copy of Bacon. She leaned back, fluttering its pages aimlessly, so wrapped in her misery that the meaning of the words could not reach her. It was useless to try to read. Every perception of the outer world was lost in the hum of interactivity that made her mind like a forge, throbbing with heat and noise. But suddenly her glance fell on some penciled sentences on the fly-leaf. They were in Amherst's hand, and the side arrested her as though she had heard him speak. LA VRAE MORAL SE MORC DE LA MORAL We perish because we follow other men's examples. Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamea, bug-bear's to frighten children. A rush of air seemed to have been let into her stifled mind. Were they his own thoughts? No, her memory recalled some confused association with great names. But at least they must represent his beliefs, must embody deeply felt convictions, or he would scarcely have taken the trouble to record them. She murmured over the last sentence once or twice, the opinions of the many, bug-bear's to frighten children. Yes, she had often heard him speak of current judgments in that way. She had never known a mind so free from the spell of the Lamea. Someone knocked, and she put aside the book and rose to her feet. It was a maid bringing a note from Wyant. There has been a motor accident beyond Clifton, and I have been sent for. I think I can be safely away for two or three hours, but ring me up at Clifton if you want me. Miss Mace has instructions, and Garford's assistant will be down at seven. She looked at the clock. It was just three, the hour at which she was to relieve Miss Mace. She smoothed the hair from her forehead, straightened her cap, tied on the apron she had laid aside. As she entered Bessie's sitting-room the nurse came out, memoranda in hand. The two moved to the window for a moment's silence, and as the wintry light fell on Miss Mace's face, Justine saw that it was white with fatigue. "'You're ill,' she exclaimed. The nurse shook her head. "'No, but it's awful this afternoon.' Her glance turned to the sick-room. "'Go and rest. I'll stay till bedtime,' Justine said. Miss Safford's down with another headache. I know. It doesn't matter. I'm quite fresh.' "'You do look rested,' the other exclaimed, her eyes lingering enviously on Justine's face. She stole away and Justine entered the room. It was true that she felt fresh. A new spring of hope had welled up in her. She had her nerves in hand again. She had regained her steady vision of life. But in the room, as the nurse had said, it was awful. The time had come when the effect of the anesthetics must be carefully husbanded, when long intervals of pain must purchase the diminishing moments of relief. Yet from Wyant's standpoint it was a good day. Things were looking well as he would have phrased it. And each day now was a fresh victory. Justine went through her task mechanically. The glow of strength and courage remained, stealing her to bear what had broken down Miss Mace's professional fortitude. But when she sat down by the bed, Bessie's moaning began to wear on her. It was no longer the utterance of human pain, but the monotonous whimper of an animal, the kind of sound that a compassionate hand would instinctively crush into silence. But her hand had other duties. She must keep watch on pulse and heart, must reinforce their action with the tremendous stimulants which Wyant was now using, and, having revived fresh sensibility to pain, must presently try to allay it by the cautious use of narcotics. It was all simple enough, but suppose she should not do it. Suppose she left the stimulants untouched. Wyant was absent. One nurse exhausted with fatigue. The other laid low by headache. Justine had the field to herself. For three hours at least no one was likely to cross the threshold of the sick room. Ah, if no more time were needed. But there was too much life in Bessie. Her youth was fighting too hard for her. She would not sink out of life in three hours. And Justine could not count on more than that. She looked at the little travelling-clock on the dressing-table, and saw that its hands marked four. An hour had passed already. She rose and administered the prescribed restorative. Then she took the pulse and listened to the beat of the heart. Strong still. Too strong. As she lifted her head, the vague animal whaling ceased, and she heard her name. Justine. She bent down eagerly. Yes? No answer. The whaling had begun again. But the one word showed her that the mind still lived in its torture house. That the poor, powerless body before her was not yet a mere bundle of senseless reflexes, but her friend Bessie Amherst dying and feeling herself die. Justine receded herself and the vigil began again. The second hour ebbed slowly. Ah, no, it was flying now. Her eyes were on the hands of the clock, and they seemed leagued against her to devour the precious minutes. And now she could see by certain spasmodic symptoms that another crisis of pain was approaching. One of the struggles that Wyant at times had almost seemed to court and exult in. Bessie's eyes turned on her again. Justine. She knew what that meant. It was an appeal for the hypodermic needle. The little instrument lay at hand beside a newly filled bottle of morphia. But she must wait, must let the pain grow more severe. Yet she could not turn her gaze from Bessie. And Bessie's eyes entreated her again. Justine. There was really no word now. The whimperings were uninterrupted. But Justine heard an inner voice. And its pleading shook her heart. She rose and filled the syringe. And returning with it, bent above the bed. She lifted her head and looked at the clock. The second hour had passed. As she looked, she heard a step in the sitting room. Who could it be? Not Dr. Garford's assistant. He was not due till seven. She listened again. One of the nurses? No, not a woman's step. The door opened and Wyant came in. Justine stood by the bed without moving toward him. He paused also, as if surprised to see her there motionless. In the intense silence, she fancied for a moment that she heard Bessie's violent agonized breathing. She tried to speak, to drown the sound of the breathing. But her lips trembled too much. And she remained silent. Wyant seemed to hear nothing. He stood so still that she felt she must move forward. As she did so, she picked up from the table by the bed the memoranda that it was her duty to submit to him. Well, he said in the familiar sick room whisper, she is dead. He fell back a step glaring at her, white and incredulous. Dead? When? A few minutes ago. Dead? It's not possible. He swept past her, shouldering her aside, pushing in an electric button as he sprang to the bed. She perceived then that the room had been almost in darkness. She recovered command of herself and followed him. He was going through the usual rapid examination. Pulse, heart, breath, hanging over the bed like some angry animal balked of its prey. Then he lifted the lids and bent close above the eyes. Take the shade off that lamp, he commanded. Justine obeyed him. He stooped down again to examine the eyes. He remained stooping a long time. Suddenly he stood up and faced her. Had she been in great pain? Yes. Worse than usual? Yes. What had you done? Nothing. There was no time. No time. He broke off to sweep the room again with his excited, incredulous glance. Where are the others? Why were you here alone? He demanded. It came suddenly. I was going to call. Their eyes met for a moment. Her face was perfectly calm. She could feel that her lips no longer trembled. She was not in the least afraid of Wyatt's scrutiny. As he continued to look at her, his expression slowly passed from incredulous wrath to something softer, more human. She could not tell what. This has been too much for you. Go and send one of the others. It's all over, he said. End of Book Three, Chapter 29


All right that breaking news tonight after two weeks without a head coach it's looking like a new era for the Tennessee Titans. We began with breaking news tonight from St. Thomas Sports Park as the Tennessee Titans announced the hiring of a new head coach.  Tennessee Titans according to Tom Pellecero has their guide. The Tennessee Titans who have now hired their head coach Brian Callahan. The Tennessee Titans are making an excellent hire. The Tennessee Titans have a new head coach it is Brian Callahan. This is the man of the hour Brian Callahan new head coach of the Tennessee Titans.  That's a great question. Just the chance because I believe that I've been capable I believe in my abilities to lead a group of people to connect with a group of people and I think that there's an organization here that feels exactly the same from top to bottom and that's exciting to me but that that that role where I can be the one out front that I can help bring people together help connect the team that's exciting to me that's what coaching is it's building those relationships it's helping develop people. Why call your own place? A lot of reasons one I like being involved in the process that's part of what makes football fun for me is that is the solving the problems. Two in today's NFL everyone's always looking for the next offensive coach and so just like just what happened to Zach and Cincinnati I've left and nothing changes for Joe Burrow. The system's gonna stay the same no matter who you hire. The voice to the quarterback is consistent and the dream is that Will and I have a partnership for the next 10 years and he's the person that I hear him every Sunday for the next 10 years he hears me the system doesn't change the verbiage is the same so the quarterback has a chance to master an offense and I think that that's important because outside of the ownership the GM and myself the next most important relationship in the building is me and him and it's hard to foster that relationship without being involved in the process and so I believe in that I've seen it work you see coaches on the league doing it but that's the biggest reason why is it one I love doing it and two there's a there's another part of that process where we want the system to stay the same and we don't want to lose it. Brian one of the first questions you get in your press conference was about Will. Yeah. About Will Leviss and had you I know you didn't need a quarterback because you got Joe Burrow but had you done much work on him so you were you were aware. I was very familiar. Very aware. You know I watch all the quarterbacks every year just to know but you see the trace he's big he's strong he's fast he's hyper competitive he can throw the ball all over the field and then he got some experience this year so like I said in my press conference the NFL is a bear on young quarterbacks and so that learning process is critical and now you get a chance to step back install a new system while evaluating what did you do well what can we do better how do we improve everything about your game going into year two a large part of that's going to be he's involved in OTA's and training camp as a starting quarterback. How quickly do you hope to have a staff in place. Ideally before the combine which is was is plenty of time. I'd like it to be done by them but it could be done sooner just depends on how these things move but we are going to take our time we're not just going to hire to hire we're going to interview people we're going to get some ideas from around the league and talk to guys that maybe I'm not familiar with and see where how we can build the best staff together. There's going to be a combination of a veteran coaches some younger coaches guys that I've worked with and I know guys that maybe I don't and so we're going to try to build the best diversity of thought and I think that that's important and a coaching staff. Let's wrap up with this I recently asked Amy Adams-Strunk at this moment where the franchise is turning in a new direction what is it important for Titans fans to know so I ask you what do you want them to know at this moment. I wish I could bottle up and sell what I felt when I was in the interview on Monday here and what I mean by that is the the energy from the people that ought that I got to talk to the excitement about what's to come you could feel the the newness of some of the things that were happening obviously but ran being here and Chad and there's there's just this there's this kind of behind-the-scenes energy swell that I felt in the interview that said to me this fits you you got to be here and I this was like the only place I wanted to go and that's because I felt that and I hope and and I know they will eventually but that the fans feel that see that that there's some really I think some really awesome awesome times ahead and I believe that in my core that we're set up to have a lot of success thank you thank you so much and welcome thank you looking forward to working


The five-step method to running a crazy profitable home-based business. Okay, so you want to have a home-based business, do you? Well, I've got one, I guess. I mean, I have an office down the street too, but I rarely go there. But if you want to know how to run a crazy profitable home-based business, this is the video for you. Stick with me and we'll get going. Before we start, don't forget to subscribe though. Hit that button down there. And when you hit that button to subscribe, you'll see a bell pop up that looks kind of like that. And you want to ring it. Turn on all bell notifications, click that bell, and click turn on all notifications. That way you're notified every single time I do a new video. Don't forget to hit that like button. It only takes you a second. Click on it. Give me a thumbs up. Now, when we start a business, the first thing that most people don't do is start a business plan. You need to have a business plan. What are you going to do? How are you going to do this? What are your assets? I mean, you got to set up a business plan because you're going to want to refer back to this on an ongoing basis. Unfortunately, what I see is when people try to start an online business, they're like, I'll try to sell a product. And then if it sells, I'll get a business license. And if I get a business license, maybe I'll try to sell more products. That's not a business plan. Okay, that's not a business plan. A business plan is saying, this is the name of my business. I'm going to go down and buy a license in my town or whatever I need. I'm going to get a federal tax ID number. I'm going to open a bank account. And then I'm going to write out what I'm going to do. That's how you set up a business plan. That's what you need to do. You don't want to get official once you figured out you could make money because let's face it, if you don't have a business plan, you have nothing written out whatsoever. You're not going to feel like you have a business. And if you don't feel like you have a business, how hard are you going to work on it? How serious are you going to take it? If you put all the things into place that you need to do first, then you're going to look at it and say, this is a serious thing. This is something I'm really going to stick with. An online business is not a side hustle. An online business is a real business. I see so many people going, well, yeah, if I could make another 500 bucks a month, that'd be great. If I could make another $1,000 a month, that'd be great. What if you could replace your job? What if you could make millions of dollars? Would you take it seriously then? You can't wait until you make a million bucks to then take it seriously. You have to take it seriously now and then possibly you'll make that million bucks. So let's move on to the next thing. Number two, make sure you have money. Now, here's the cool thing about online business. It doesn't take much. I started mine with $100. It wasn't a lot of money. I did get a business license first, so I'm not factoring that in. But the bottom line is it doesn't take a whole lot of money. However, if you're working a job, you don't want to quit your job and then go start an online business because you don't know how long it's going to take. You don't know if it's going to be a week, a month, six months. I started my online business. I'm trying to think now in, I think, September or November of 2009. And then it took me about eight or nine months to where I was making enough money to where I could just quit my job, which was pretty nice. And that's what I did, which was awesome. But bottom line is it took me some time to get everything organized, to get things working, to have enough money coming in. You don't want to jump from your job and have to depend on whatever you make that month on your online business because it goes up and down. I have really good months and then I have some slower months. At this point, after 11 years, yeah, I have a pretty good income every month. I don't have to worry so much and I have money in the bank and I can live for years. But bottom line is in the beginning you can't do that, so you want to be very careful. Don't spend any money you make in the beginning. I'm going to tell you that right up front. Don't spend any money you make in the beginning. Call back into the business. Save it. You're going to need it. I promise you will need it. And here's the fact 82% of businesses fail because of lack of capital. They don't have the money to keep the business going. You don't want to be in that situation. I have customers now who will order 30, 40, $50,000 worth of my products. And this is my survival food products. And I have to pay to manufacture that and make that and put that in the warehouse and then I collect money from them. So I've got to have the money to invest in that before I can even proceed with that sale. So if you don't have the money to cover your sales, even if you have these great sales, people say I'm going to buy this much from you. But you don't have the money to buy the supplies to build that product, whatever that product is. Then of course you can't fulfill that sale. Number three, surround yourself with the right people. Now this I could talk on for hours and hours and hours. Having the right people around you is really important. And I'm not talking about just your employees. The employees are super important. Having good employees is great. You've got to treat them well. You've got to pay them well. You've got to not expect too much, but you do have to have expectations. But you have to be reasonable. And you've got to treat them right. And if you do that, you're okay. Now I use full-time employees that are in the U.S. And I also use employees that are overseas. So I have different employees in different areas. But I always make sure it's a good person, okay? I ask them, you know, what's your family situation? What's your living situation? You know, what do you think of this? And I actually do interviews to see what kind of human being they are, because it's not just that they can do the job. I mean, I can find anybody who's good at building websites or editing videos or, you know, narrating stuff. I mean, I can find people to do that. That's not the problem. The problem is finding a good quality person that cares about it. That's the big part. Do they care about the job? Will they care about working at your company? So that's the first part as you look at your employees. The next part is who are your friends? Who are you hanging out with, okay? If you're hanging out with the wrong crowd and you're trying to get ahead and start a business and all your friends are hanging out at happy hour or they're out partying and they have terrible family lives, is that who you want to hang out with to grow your business? The truth is you cannot hang out with people like that and have a profitable, thriving business because those things will drag you down. Those people will drag you down. They're going to constantly tell you why you can't achieve things, why you can't do things. That's not what you need around you. You got to have the right people around you. Now, that's not to mention you need the right professionals around you. You need to have a lawyer. You need to talk to a lawyer. You need to have an accountant, somebody who's going to watch over your books for you. You got to have that. Are you going to set up your business properly? What kind of business are you going to have? What's it going to be? Is it going to be a sole proprietorship? Is it going to be a partnership? Is it going to be a corporation? Are you going to have an LLC, a limited liability? And if you don't know any of those things, you need to research that, right? If you don't know what I'm talking about right now, because you need to have all this set up to have a well-run business. Oh, yeah. And don't forget, you need insurance. Yeah. You need insurance. Every business needs insurance. And you need to talk to a professional to see what kind of insurance you need. Maybe you need to talk to a lawyer. But, you know, like we have product liability insurance and we have warehouse insurance. We have all these different kinds of insurances. But we have to have them in case there's an issue. Then you're ready to build that sales page or that website. And where are you going to do that? Now, I personally recommend that you don't build a website right off the bat if you don't have an established business already. In other words, if you don't have a line of products and you're already selling them, then you don't need a website yet. If you're trying out new products, I would suggest using something like Cartra. You will find a link below to Cartra. You can watch a video on Cartra and what all it does. It'll essentially run your online business, okay?  It'll do that. And you can test products in Cartra first. And once that product is proven, once it does well, once you've sold enough of it, then you can go ahead and build a website to put the product on there. Because you can sell it through Cartra in the beginning to test it out. Now, if you could market your business and get some pre-orders in advance, let people know what you're doing, you can do very, very well. Pre-orders are really cool, really important. I see this a lot on launches where people will say, hey, I'm going to have a course. It's going to come out in six weeks. You can buy it now, but it won't be out in six weeks. They haven't even written the course yet. They're getting pre-orders. They're getting money in to finance that particular situation. And if you don't think pre-orders are important, I bought Tesla stock, and I think $127, something like that. And it ended up splitting five times. And now it's back to over $700. I did really well on it. But the main thing that really helped Tesla was pre-orders. Now, I want to put a chart up on the screen here so you can kind of see this chart and see what they did. This is Tesla's Model 3 pre-orders in perspective, okay? In 2012, you can see right here, the cumulative SX deliveries was 2,600 cars. Not that many. In 2013, it was 25,000. In 2014, it was 57,000. And 2015, it was 107,000. Then in 2016, forecast was 187,197,000. But check this out. As of April, they had 276,000 sales because of pre-orders. Just pre-orders. And that generates a lot of money. And I know they're coming out with a truck. And I put a deposit on the truck, and they took hundreds of thousands of orders for that truck. And people put deposits down. So now they've got all this cash that they can use to actually produce the truck and build the truck that we already put a deposit on. Not a bad business model. Number five, this is probably the most important thing I would ever tell anybody who wants to sell online is become a marketing expert. That's it. Marketing expert. Because online, you can't talk to people the way you can in person. They don't come to your place at business and get to see your nice showroom or any of that. All they see is what you've got online. Your online presence, if it looks poor and it doesn't look great, then you're not going to do well. You're just not going to do well. You need to have a really good online presence. If you have a good online presence, you know how to market, you have good sales pages, and that's why I tell you, you need Cartre. If you look down in the description there, there's a video you can watch on Cartre and it will help you so much in your business. If you get that software and use it, and matter of fact, you can watch the video and if you like it, you can actually get a trial for $1. But you need something like that to help you market. Because if you're not good at marketing, you're not going to be able to sell online. Now, as you can see in the chart that I'm going to put up on the screen here, outbound marketing is going out of style. Inbound marketing is on the rise in all these different areas, in search engines, in social networks, marketing, social media, mobile media. All this stuff is going up in all the traditional ways, which was newspaper, consumer magazines, radio, trade magazines, and TV. They've all declined to where they're not even really in competition with online sales anymore. Now, check this out. I want to show you some different ways that you can spend your advertising dollars online and the difference it makes. Let's look at the different ways online here and the return on investment per dollar spent. So, if you did banner ads, you're going to get about $2 back for every dollar you spent, not bad. Keyword ads, you're going to get $17 back for every dollar spent, not bad. Mobile is $10.51. Internet display is $19.72. SEO is $22.24. Catalogs, $7.30. I'll tell you, we don't even have a catalog for a survival food anymore, but email is $40. And that's also why I tell you you need to get Cartra because Cartra is also an email marketing platform and you can use that to make this money. So, maybe I should have listed it first, but bottom line is being a marketer online is just essential to everything. If you put everything else in place, if you've got a good website and you've got a good product, you have good customer support, good employees you won't make it online. You've got to be able to market. You've got to learn marketing so super important. Now, on this channel I've done a lot of videos on marketing, on selling online, on sales pages. And I want you to check those out. You can just go to my channel and search any one of these things. You're going to see a plethora of different videos. I have over 700 videos here and you can learn a lot of information. I hope this video helped you out. I hope it got you in the right direction. I want to help you all I can. If you have successes in different areas, put that down there. That motivates people. I love seeing stuff like that. If you have ideas for new videos, you can put that down there. Don't forget, give me a thumbs up right there. Click that thumbs up. And don't forget to subscribe. Hit that subscribe button and ring the bell. There's a big bell that's going to pop up next. It's not a big bell. It's a tiny bell. It's a little about that big. You'll see it. Hit that subscribe button. You'll see the bell pop up. When it does ring it, turn on all notifications so that you're notified every single time I do a new video or I go live and maybe I can talk to you online. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you real soon.