"Most diseases are horrible--what about cancer?" he said coolly.
"But people can't help cancer, and they can--at least I think so--help
your sort of illness. Louis, I saw the two people I love best on earth
dying. One of them died of cancer, the other of drink. I wasn't going to
tell you that. But when you said it was in your family I was going to
tell you that was no argument. It's been in my family for generations
and generations. I suppose it's in everyone's to some extent. It has
wiped out all my family. But it certainly is not going to wipe out me. I
perhaps should not talk about my family to you, a stranger. Yet somehow
I feel that father would not mind my telling you about him, if it can
help you from suffering as he did. He cured himself."
"How?" he cried with sudden, breathless hopefulness.
"There, that's the awfulness of it. I don't know. I only know that one
day he was drunk, and the next day he was not, and never was again. He
said he gave all his burden to God."
He shook himself impatiently.
"Oh, I can't believe in all that rot!" he said harshly. "I neither trust
God nor myself."
Below deck the mandoline began to twang again, and the soft Italian
voice went on with "La Donna E Mobile" interminably.
"Louis, listen to me," she said quietly. "I'm not going to let you die
like father died.
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