During this time he performed two
operations which the surgeons who had been sent out by the Railway
Directors at Montreal declared were masterpieces.
When that month was up he was a changed man, and he opened an office in
Lebanon. Men trusted him despite his past, and women learned that there
was never a moment when his pulses beat unevenly in their presence.
Nathan Rockwell had had his lesson and it was not necessary to learn it
again. To him, woman, save as a subject of his skill, was a closed book.
He regarded them as he regarded himself, with a kindly cynicism. He never
forgot that his own trouble could and would have been avoided had it not
been for woman's vanity and consequent cruelty. The unwholesome three had
shared his moral lapse with wide-open eyes, and were in no sense victims
of his; but, disregarding their responsibility, they had, from sheer
jealousy, wrecked his past, and, to their own surprise, had wrecked
themselves as well. They were of those who act first and then think--too
late.
Thus it was that both men and women called Rockwell a handsome man, but
thought of him as having only a crater of exhausted fires in place of a
heart. They came to him with their troubles--even the women of Manitou
who ought to have gone to the priest.
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