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How “The Woman Thou Gavest
99
I N every woman’s life there must come some
fcreat crisis some moment when all her
future bangs In the balance. In the current
Instalment of "The Woman Thou Gavest Me,”
the wonderful analysis of modern marriage
relations by Hall Caine, appearing In Hearst's
Magazine, the distinguished English novelist
bares the second step in the development of
the great crlslB that has come In the life of his
heroine, Mary O'Neil.
Mary O'Neil has practically been sold in mar
riage by an ambitious father to Lord Hae, a
profligate nobleman. On their wedding night
the two agree to be man and wife in name only.
Martin Conrad, an old playmate of Mary, and
now a famous Antarctic explorer, comes into
her life again, and the two find they love each
other. Through the machinations of Alma, an
old friend of Mary, with whom Lord Rae is in
fatuated, the loveless wife and Martin spend a
night alone In the castle.
What follows is told in part in the following
excerpts reprinted by permission of HEARST'S
MAGAZINE from the current Instalment of the
novel.
(From tlir rurrrnl Inistatmrnt of "Thr VVomnu Thou Uivnl
HEARST'S >1 ACAZINK.l
Me" la the
Mn.i number of
N EXT morning, at half-past eight, my
Martin left me.
We were standing together In the
boudoir between the table and the fire, which
was bucning briskly, for the sultry weather had
gone in the night, and the Autumn air was
keen, though the early sun was shining.
At the last moment he was unwilling to go.
and it was as much as 1 could do to persuade
him. Perhaps It it one of the mysteries which
God alone can read that our positions seemed
to have been reversed since the day before.
He was confused, agitated, and full of self-
reproaches, while I felt no fear and no remorse,
but only an indescribable joy, as if a new and
gracious life had suddenly dawmed on me.
"I don’t feel that 1 can leave England now,"
he said
"You can and you must.” 1 answered, and
then I spoke of his expedition, as a great work
which it was impossible to put off,
“Somebody else must do It. then," he said.
“Nobody else can, or shall," I replied.
"But our lives are forever joined together
now and everything else must go by the board."
"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake,
Martin. 1 refuse and forbid it."
"Then if 1 must go, you must go. too,” he
said. "I mean you must go with me to London
end wait ther until I return.”
"That is impossible,” I answered
The eyes of the world were on him now. If
I did w hat he desired it would reflect dishonor
on his name, and he should not suffer for my
sake under any circumstances.
“But think wha' may happen to you while I
am away,” he said.
"Nothing will happen while you are away,
Ma-ttn." .
"But how can you be sure of the future when
God alone knows what it Is to be?”
"Then God will provide for it," I said, and
with the last answer he had to be satisfied.
“You must take a letter from me at all
events.’’ said Martin, and sitting at my desk he
began to write.
! knew what he was trying to say. A shadow
seemed to pass between us. My throat grew
thick, and for a moment I could not speak. But
then 1 heard myself say: "I^ove is stronger
than death; many waters cannot quench it."
xHi9 hands quivered; his whole body trembled,
and 1 thought he was going to clasp me to his
breast as before, but he only drew down my
forehead with his hot hand and kissed it.
That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to
pass before my eyes, and w’hen It cleared the
door of the room was open and my Martin was
gone.
1 stood where he had left me and listened.
I heard his strong step on the stone flags of
the hall— he was going out at the porch.
I heard the metallic clashing of the door of
the automobile he was already in the car.
1 heard the throb of the motor and the ruck
ling of the gravel of the path—he was moving
away.
1 heard the dying down of the engine and
the soft roll of the rubber wheels- I was alone.
For some moments after that the world
seemed empty and void. But the feeling
passed, and when I recovered my strength I
found Martin's letter in my moist left hand.
Then 1 knelt before the fte,- end putting the
letter into the flames I burnt i
Within two hours of Martin’s departure I
had regained complete possession of myself
and was feeling more happy than I had ever
felt before.
Faced the Inevitable
"I found Alma smoking a cigarette an' reading the report nioud in a mock-heroic tone to a
number cf men, including my husband, whose fat body was shaking with laughter."
t.V Frank ( nils Illitstration o t "The W oman Thou Gavest M e," lu the Current .Number of
HEARST'S MVtiAZINIA) ,
The tormenting compunctions of the past
months were gone. It jwas just as if I had
obeyed some higher and stronger law of my
being-and had become a freer and purer woman.
Weeks passed; the weather changed; the
golden hue of Autumn gave Diace to a chilly
grayness; the sky became sad, with Wintry
clouds; the land became soggy with frequent
rains; the trees showed their bare black
boughs; the withered lea,ves drifted along the
roads before blusterous winds that came up
from the sea; the evenings grew long and the
mornings dreary—but still Alma, with her
mother, remained at Castle Rae.
I began to be afraid of her. Something of
the half-hypnotic spell which she had exercised
over me when I was a child asserted itself
again, but now it seemed to me to be always
evil and sometimes almost demoniacal.
I had a feeling that she was watching me day
and night. Occasionally, when she thought I
was looking dpwn, I caught the vivid gaze of
her coai-black eyes -looking across at me
through her long sable-colored eyelashes.
Her conversation was as sweet and suave as
ever, but I found myself creeping away from
her and ever shrinking from her touch.
More than once I remembered what Martin
In his blunt way had said of her: “I hate that
woman; she’s like a snake; I want to put my
foot on it.”
The feeling that I was alone in this great
gaunt house with a woman who was waiting
and watching to do me a mischief that she
might step into my shoes was preying upon
my health and spirits.
Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and
exhaustion for which I could not account Look
ing into my glass in the morning I saw that
my nose was becoming pinched, my cheeks
thin, and my whole face not merely pale, but
gray.
Alma saw these changes in my appearance,
and in the over-sweet tones of her succulent
voice she constantly offered me her sympathy.
I always declined it, protesting that I was per
fectly well, but none the less I shrank within
myself and became more and more unhappy.
So fierce a strain could not last very long,
and the climax came about three weeks after
my husband left for London.
I was rising from breakfast with Alma and
her mother when I was suddenly seized with
giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment,
I fainted right away.
On recovering consciousness I found myself
stretched out on the floor with Alma and her
mother leaning over me.
Never to the last hour of my life shall I
forget the look in Alma’s eyes as I opened my
own. With her upper lip sucked in and her
lower one slightly set forward, she was giving
her mother a quick side-glance of evil triumph.
I was overwhelmed with confusion. I
thought I might have been speaking as I was
coming to, mentioning a name, perhaps, out of
that dim and sacred chamber of the uncon
scious soul into which God alone should see.
I noticed, too, that my bodice had been un
hooked at the back so as to leave it loose
over my bosom.
As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were
open she put her arm under my head and be
gan to pour out a flood of honeyed words into
my ears.
"My dear, sweet darling,” she said, “you
scared us to death. We must send for a doctor
immediately—your own doctor, you know.”
I tried to say there was no necessity, but
she would not listen.
“Such a seizure may be of no consequence,
my love. I trust it isn’t. But, on the other
hand, it may be a serious matter, and it is my
duty, dearest, my duty to your husband, to dis
cover the cause of it.”
I knew quite well what Alma was thinking
of, yet I could not say more without strength
ening her suspicions, so I asked for Price, who
helped me up to my room, where I sat on the
edge of the bed while she gave me brandy and
other restoratives.
That was the beginning of the end. I
needed no doctor to say what had befallen me.
It was something more stupendous for me than
the removal of mountains or the stopping of
the everlasting coming and going of the sea.
The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood,
the most sacred, the most divine, the mighty
mystery of a new life had come to me as it
comes to other women. Yet how had it come?
Like a lowering thunderstorm.
The golden hour of her sex, which ought to
be the sweetest and moBt joyful^ in a woman’s
life—the hour when she goes with a proud
and swelling heart to the one she loves, the
one who loves her. and with her arms about
his neck and her face hidden in his breast
whispers her great new secret, and he clasps
her more fondly than ever to his heart, be
cause another and closer union has bound them
together—that golden hour had come to me,
and there was none to share it.
When Are We Really Lead? A New Problem of Science
New Discoveries in the Mys
terious Phenomena of La
tent Life and Suspended
Animation That Raise
Doubts as to When Vi
tality Actually Is Dis-
troyed in Us.
T
WHEN ARE WE TRULY DEAD?
i HE fact that life in many animals may ha
auspended by freezing and other proc
esses was recently discussed in thin
newspaper, and the extraordinary plan of a
doctor to resuscitate the bodies of Captain
Scott and his companions, frozen on their way
from the South Pole, was mentioned.
The distinguished Professor Harris, of the
University of Birmingham, England, here
enumerates many remarkable caBes of sus
pended animation and shows that there is an
Infinite number of steps between life and
death. |
By Profeeaor David Fraaer Harris, M. D., B.
Sc. (London), of the University of Bir
mingham.
T O the ordinary person nothing seemi
easier than to distinguish between life
and death, or, to be more exact, between
a living and a dead animal. Such a person at
once thinks of the warm, breathing, moving or
ganism, with its beating heart #hd its percep
tions of the outer world, in contrast with the
cold, still unconscious corpse In which the
heart haB stopped forever.
But there may exist theoretically, and there
do exist actually, certain degrees of partial
llvingness or apparent death—phases of de
pressed vitality so closely resembling death as
to he indistinguishable from it, at any rate by
one’s unaided senses, or without tne assistance
of the elaborate and delicate instruments of a
modern physiological laboratory.
The oorpee putrefies because, being lifeless.
It cannot resist the inroads of bacteria, which
it did more or less successfully while It was
alive. It has no longer any affectability
toward the bacteria, no longer reacts toward
them by preparing antibodies for their poi-
sons, bacteriolysms, and so forth, to destroy
them.
Affectability Is the sign of life, the first and
the last, the alpha and the omega of llving
ness: even the electric manifestation is but
one r, suit of bioplasm possessing affectability
at all; if the affectability were gone there
could he no development of electric current.
But the egg albumen never had affectability,
and therefore never had life: it gives no elec
tric current.
But there Is n state known as "latent life”
which is a particularly interesting one, for the
organism having all the airpearance of death
• an nevertheless once again manifest vital
characteristics.
Ever since the discovery of the dried rotif-
rs by the diligent Dutch histologist Leeuwen
hoek, In 1719, we have known that animal or
ganisms can exist for years in a dried up state
In dust or muff and "come to life again,” as It
is said, on being moistened. Of course, they
have never been dead, for death is the perma
nent impossibility of manifesting life in that
which once lived. Not only rotifers, or wheel-
animalcula, can survive this extreme degree
of desiccation.
Both these classes of animals actually pos
sess digestive and nervous systems, for they
are by no means of the most primitive type;
they take from twenty minutes to an hour or
two to revive on being moistened. Other ani
mals capable of withstanding the abstraction
of water are the Auguillulldae, or paste-eels,
and certain Infusoria. SeedB In a dry state for
as long a time as two hundred years have pro
duced seedlings -In other words, have been
alive all the time.
Bacteria, the lowest plant organisms, have
A Frog Frozen Stiff ana /apparently Dead in
a Refrigerating Jar. After a Month the to
Frog Wat Removed, Reauacitated and Wai
Lively at Ever.
enormous powers or resisting conditions
that tend to death. The late Professor
MacFayden showed that the bacteria of
oertRln diseases frozen at a temperature
of liquid aid (about minus 360 )Fahr.
were not killed, but could survive so
extremely drastio a procedure as this
and yet retain their specific vital patho
genic characteristics. When frozen they were
so brittle that they could he powdered in a
mortar, yet they were nevertheless still in the
state of "latent life.”
Coming to the coid-blooded animals, we have
many instances of suspended animation among
such creaturee as snails, water-beetles, frogs
and fish. The best Instances are of fish when
frozen. Sir John Franklin, in his Polar expe
dition of 1820, reported carp flsh frozen so
Bolld that the intestines of some of them could
be taken out en masse, yet on being thawed
before a Are they “revived and moved about
actively.” Preyer, the German physiologist,
had evidence that frogs frozen solid could be
revived. Fishes frozen in a block of ice have
been known to revive, although some of their
companions were frozen so hard they could he
powdered up along with the Ice. According to
the French experimenter, Raoul Pictet, frogs
endured a temperature of minus 22 Fahren
heit, and flsh a degree or two below' minus 5
Fahrenheit. These are all cases of ’’latent
life” at low temperatures.
Sir Ernest Shackleton reports that in the
South Polar seas there are marine organisms
frozen up in the ice for ten months in the
year: they move about only during the other
two.
Ascending to the warm-blooded animals and
to man himself, we do not find such extreme
instances of suppression of vitality as in the
case of lower organisms—creatures with more
sluggish, and therefore less easily deranged,
metabolism.
All states of trance or narcolepsy—ex
tremely deep, prolonged apparent sleep—such
as the famous case of Colonel Townsend, re
ported on carefully by Dr. Cheyne, of Dublin,
belong to this category. This case is very well
known to medical men, but is, perhaps, not so
familiar to others that the following quotations
of Dr. Oheynes words will he superfluous:
“He could die or expire when he pleased and
yet ... by an effort he could come to life
Photograph of a Hindoo Fakir Being Unearthed from a Grave in Which He
Had Lain for Two Weekz in a State of Suspended Animation.
Germ of a Wheat
Kernel, Shown
in Section to Ex
hibit Structure.
< I-) I, t* a V e n of
(he future wheat
plant.
(8) Sheath pro-
teetliiK the «*m-
hryo plant.
(It) Hoot of the
future plant.
(T) Hoot Sheath.
and too well authenti
cated by European eye
witnesses of unim
peachable integrity, to
be set aside as either
in themselves untrue
or due to collective de
lusion.
James Braid, the first
investigator of hypno
tism, has narrated a
.case, typical of many
others, in which a fakir
was tied up in a sealed
sack, which was placed
inside a locked box,
which was left for six
weeks in a «ealed-up
dark room in the pal
ace of Runjeet Singh.
Above Is an Enlarged Diagram of a Piece of Wheat Taken The man s ears and
from the Wrappings of a Mummy 2,000 Years Old. Be- nostrils had . been
low It Is a Greatly Enlarged Photograph of the Germ blocked up with wax.
Cell of a Similar Piece of Mummy Wheat, Which Still which was still there
Held Germinative Life and Sprouted. when the body was
brought into the light
at the end of six weeks. On the sack being
opened the muscles were found quite stiff, the
jaws tightly clenched, and no trace of a pulse
beat was to be anywhere detected. By degrees
the man revived, the muscles softened, the
pulse began to be perceptible, and in a feehle
voice he asked, “Do you believe me now?”
The interesting inference from all these
cases of "latent life" or suspended animation
is that, though vitality cannot be said to have
vanished, yet the organism during the time of
the latency is giving none of the signs of the
possession of vitality. It is not taking food,
oxygen or water; it is not giving out carbon
dioxide or water, or other chemical result
in livingness; it is not moving; in the
higher animals both the cardiac and respira
tory activities are in abeyance.
No state could be more like death; infinitely
more like it titan sleep. Latent life, not sleep,
is the true image of death. Revivability, how
ever, was there; life was depressed, inhibited,
masked, hut not abolished.
Recently some very interesting and success-.
a kam. . . n e composed himself on his
hack and lay in a still posture for some time.
1 found his pulse sink gradually, till at last I
could not feci any. by flic most exact and nice
touch. Dr. Baynard C(Siitft not feel the least
motion in the heart, nor Mr. Skrine perceive
the least soil on the bright mirror he held to
his mouth . . . could not discover the least
symptom of life in him. We began to conclude
he had carried the experiment too far; and at
last we wore satisfied that he was actually
dead and were just ready to leave him, . . .
By nine in the morning, as we were going
away, we observed some motion about the
body and upon examination found his pulse
and the motion of his heart gradually return
ing; he began to breathe heavily and speak
softly."
Still more extraordinary are the narratives
of the fakirs in India, who are said to allow
themselves to he built up In sealed tombs for
weeks without food, and to be alive at the end
of that time. Reports of these cases of human
suspended animation are now too numerous
ful efforts have been made to revive the appar
ently dead heart in an actually dead body. The
following quotation is not from a book of fairy
tales, but from a hignly technical work on
physiology, published about a year ago:
"Hearts can he revived many days after
death—even the hearts of children dead of dis
ease. In ten such cases only three gave nega
tive results. The heart of a boy dead of pneu
monia revived in all parts twenty hours after
death. In the case of the heart of an ape, Her-
ing recovered the heart after four and a half
hours and then froze it. After twenty-eight
hours thirty minutes the heart was again re
suscitated.”
Of course, this does not mean that these
hearts began to beat again in health, but that,
by prolonged massage, an apparently dead
heart can revive sufficiently to give a series
of spontaneous beats.
Now on reflecting on these examples of lat
ent life, it will be seen that we must here have
cases of interference with the full mobility of
the molecules of the living substance, whether
that has been brought about by abstracting
water or abstracting heat. The absence of
food, as in hibernating animals, tends very
much in the same direction—enfeeblement of
the vital processes, so that the bears, dormice,
hedgehogs, tortoises, frogs and many other
animals which enter on a Winter sleep and eat
nothing during that time, although they are
not in the state of typical latent life, are not
in a state of extremely depressed vitality. Some
of them actually cease to breathe, but the heart
beats. It is a question of degree of livingness.
We must, in fact, recognize that there are
degrees of life or of livingness in each cell,
tissue, organ and organism. Some tissues are
intensely alive, some are already dead, for in
stance enamel of tooth and horn of nail. We
can construct a scale passing through all de
grees of corporate livingness, from the tremen
dous physical and mental power of a Glad
stone, a Kelvin or a Helmholtz, down to the
stupidity of a country yokel, or the hopeless
sufferer from acute melancholia. In melan
cholia all the tissues are demonstrably less
alive than in the normal person; less oxygen
is taken in, less urea and carbon dioxide aro
excreted, and less heat is evolved. Melan/ ’
cholla is not merely a question of the dull
brain; glands, muscles, heart, skin7 intestine,
all are dull, and relatively lifeless.
There is, in other words, for any given tissus
no hard and fast line between the fullest vital
lty at one end of the scale and eternal death at
the other. As one nears the death-point ws
pass through the stage or state of "latent life."
While the extremes are quite distinct, the In
termediate stages are indistinguishable from
one another. Just as in the case of the visible
spectrum; no one can fail to distinguish the red
from the violet, yet there is an infinite number
of gradations of color between red and green,
and between green’and violet.
Assuming, in the meantime, that we can get
no better conception of the modus operandi of
living matter than by conceiving of it as due to
molecules—no doubt of great complexity—en
dowed with chemical affinity, and therefore
obeying certain chemical laws, we seem to have
to admit that, within limits, life is more Intense
as the temperature rises and less intense as th«
temperature falls. This behavior is exactly
that of substances capable of chemical lnteraot
tlon, so that, viewed from the purely physlcoj
chemical standpoint, life Is the ontcome <4
chemical activities.
Latent life is the temporary immobilization
of molecules of living matter without the de«
structlon of these atomic affinities which ar4
the chemical basis of life, whereas death Is suc9
permanent molecular immobilization that con
tala atomlo affinities are abolished. The write*
has suggested that living matter in latent Ufa
suggested allied states of extreme physiological
insusceptibility to stimulation should be de*
scribed as exhibiting the “functional inertia of
protoplasm.”
In intensely living matter the molecular
whirl is most intense.
In latent life the weights of the protoplasmld
clock have been seized by a mysterious hand;
in death they have descended to the utmost
length of the cord. The vital clock in the one
case has only been arrested; in the other It has
run down and cannot be wound up again.
There is a good deal of difference in a descent
between a stoppage and the end reached; or to
take another analogy, in life the “sands of
time” are running out rapidly; in latent life
the stream has been stopped; in death the sand
is all in the lower globe.
Molecular mobility is, then, in technical lan
guage, the necessary physical condition for vi
tality, and any agencies or reagents which di
minish that mobility tend to render life latent
and therefore to extinguish it.
On this partial molecular immobilization de
pends the efficacy of a large number of our
drugs and the action of many poisons. To abol
ish consciousness we administer chloroform, a
substance which, by uniting with certain of the
chemically active radicles constituting the liv
ing matter, immobilizes the whole molecular
correlative in the disappearance of conscious-
comnlex.
This immobilization of the molecules of the
cells of the cerebral cortex has its psychical
correlative in the disappearance of conscious
ness. But the chloroform really tends to immo
bilize heart cells and cells of the breathing
centres as well, and what the surgeon wants is
the former—cerebral immobilization, or anaes
thesia—without the latter (death).
The cyanides (Prussic acid) for some reason
not yet fully understood, act as such deadly
poisons because with great rapidity they im
mobilize the cells of the respiratory centre.
Thus, the solution of our problem, What is
latent life? seems capable of being stated In
the terms of the already known. The organ
ism in latent life is not dead, for it is capable
of living again; it is, however, very far from
being fully alive, for it is manifesting none of
the attributes of livingness.
Without a chemical theory of living matter
“suspended animation” would be inexplicable;
and while one would freely admit that a chemi
cal conception of vitality is only a partial one,
a good yorking hypothesis, yet at the same
time we gain a fuller insight into what life Is
and what death is not, than if we attempted
to enunciate either condition in terms outside
of physics or chemistry altogether. In a sense
very different from what the author of the
lines meant it, yet in a sense profoundly true—
“ ’Tis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.”