He had a strong,
full-blooded young man's horror of death. He could think of it only as a
fitting close to a long, useful life, or as a possible release from
months of sickness and pain. That anyone young, and in good health, with
the world of beauty and years of usefulness before them, with the
opportunities and duties of life calling, should willfully seek to die,
was a monstrous thought. After all the boy knew so little. He was only
beginning to sense vaguely the great forces that make and mar humankind.
At the calm words of the nurse he turned quickly toward the bed with a
shudder. "Her determination to die!" he repeated in an awed whisper.
Miss Farwell was watching him curiously.
He whispered half to himself, wonderingly, "Why should she wish to die?"
"Why should she wish to live?" The nurse's cold tones startled him.
He turned to her perplexed, wondering, speechless.
"I--I--do not understand," he said at last.
"I don't suppose you do," she answered grimly. "How could you? Your
ministry is a matter of schools and theories, of doctrines and beliefs.
This is a matter of life."
"My church--" he began, remembering his sermon.
But she interrupted him, "Your church does not understand, either; it is
so busy earning money to pay its ministers that it has no time for such
things as this."
"But they do not know," he faltered. "I did not dream that such a thing
as this could be." He looked about the room and then at the still form on
the bed, with a shudder.
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