III + 

He had been seeking a precipitation test for the diagnosis of syphilis which should be quicker and simpler than the Wassermann. His slackened fingers and rusty mind were becoming used to the laboratory and to passionate hypotheses when he was dragged away to help Pickerbaugh in securing publicity. He was coaxed into making his first speech: an address on “What the Laboratory Teaches about Epidemics” for the Sunday Afternoon Free Lecture Course of the Star of Hope Universalist Church. + 

He was flustered when he tried to prepare his notes, and on the morning of the affair he was chill as he remembered the dreadful thing he would do this day, but he was desperate with embarrassment when he came up to the Star of Hope Church. + 

People were crowding in; mature, responsible people. He quaked, “They’re coming to hear me, and I haven’t got a darn thing to say to ’em!” It made him feel the more ridiculous that they who presumably wished to listen to him should not be aware of him, and that the usher, profusely shaking hands at the Byzantine portal, should bluster, “You’ll find plenty room right up the side aisles, young man.” + 

“I’m the speaker for the afternoon.” + 

“Oh, oh, yes, oh, yes, Doctor. Right round to the Bevis Street entrance, if you please, Doctor.” + 

In the parlors he was unctuously received by the pastor and a committee of three, wearing morning clothes and a manner of Christian intellectuality. + 

They held his hand in turn, they brought up rustling women to meet him, they stood about him in a polite and twittery circle, and dismayingly they expected him to say something intelligent. Then, suffering, ghastly frightened, dumb, he was led through an arched doorway into the auditorium. Millions of faces were staring at his apologetic insignificance⁠—faces in the curving lines of pews, faces in the low balcony, eyes which followed him and doubted him and noted that his heels were run down. + 

The agony grew while he was prayed over and sung over. + 

The pastor and the lay chairman of the Lecture Course opened with suitable devotions. While Martin trembled and tried to look brazenly at the massed people who were looking at him, while he sat nude and exposed and unprotected on the high platform, the pastor made announcement of the Thursday Missionary Supper and the Little Lads’ Marching Club. They sang a brief cheerful hymn or two⁠—Martin wondering whether to sit or stand⁠—and the chairman prayed that “our friend who will address us today may have power to put his Message across.” Through the prayer Martin sat with his forehead in his hand, feeling foolish, and raving, “I guess this is the proper attitude⁠—they’re all gawping at me⁠—gosh, won’t he ever quit?⁠—oh, damn it, now what was that point I was going to make about fumigation?⁠—oh, Lord, he’s winding up and I’ve got to shoot!” + 

Somehow, he was standing by the reading-desk, holding it for support, and his voice seemed to be going on, producing reasonable words. The blur of faces cleared and he saw individuals. He picked out a keen old man and tried to make him laugh and marvel. + 

He found Leora, toward the back, nodding to him, reassuring him. He dared to look away from the path of faces directly in front of him. He glanced at the balcony⁠— + 

The audience perceived a young man who was being earnest about sera and vaccines but, while his voice buzzed on, that churchly young man had noted two silken ankles distinguishing the front row of the balcony, had discovered that they belonged to Orchid Pickerbaugh and that she was flashing down admiration. + 

At the end Martin had the most enthusiastic applause ever known⁠—all lecturers, after all lectures, are gratified by that kind of applause⁠—and the chairman said the most flattering things ever uttered, and the audience went out with the most remarkable speed ever witnessed, and Martin discovered himself holding Orchid’s hand in the parlors while she warbled, in the most adorable voice ever heard, “Oh, Dr. Arrowsmith, you were just wonderful! Most of these lecturers are old stuffs, but you put it right over! I’m going to do a dash home and tell Dad. He’ll be so tickled!” + 

Not till then did he find that Leora had made her way to the parlors and was looking at them like a wife. + 

As they walked home Leora was eloquently silent. + 

“Well, did you like my spiel?” he said, after a suitable time of indignant waiting. + 

“Yes, it wasn’t bad. It must have been awfully hard to talk to all those stupid people.” + 

“Stupid? What d’you mean by ‘stupid’? They got me splendidly. They were fine.” + 

“Were they? Well anyway, thank Heaven, you won’t have to keep up this silly gassing. Pickerbaugh likes to hear himself talk too well to let you in on it very often.” + 

“I didn’t mind it. Fact, don’t know but what it’s a good thing to have to express myself publicly now and then. Makes you think more lucidly.” + 

“As for instance the nice, lovely, lucid politicians!” + 

“Now you look here, Lee! Of course we know your husband is a mutt, and no good outside the laboratory, but I do think you might pretend to be a little enthusiastic over the first address he’s ever made⁠—the very first he’s ev‑er tackled⁠—when it went off so well.” + 

“Why, silly, I was enthusiastic. I applauded a lot. I thought you were terribly smart. It’s just⁠—There’s other things I think you can do better. What shall we do tonight; have a cold snack at home or go to the cafeteria?” + 

Thus was he reduced from hero to husband, and he had all the pleasures of inappreciation. + 

He thought about his indignities the whole week, but with the coming of winter there was a fever of dully sprightly dinners and safely wild bridge and their first evening at home, their first opportunity for secure and comfortable quarreling, was on Friday. They sat down to what he announced as “getting back to some real reading, like physiology and a little of this fellow Arnold Bennett⁠—nice quiet reading,” but which consisted of catching up on the news notes in the medical journals. + 

He was restless. He threw down his magazine. He demanded: + 

“What’re you going to wear at Pickerbaugh’s snow picnic tomorrow?” + 

“Oh, I haven’t⁠—I’ll find something.” + 

“Lee, I want to ask you: Why the devil did you say I talked too much at Dr. Strafford’s last evening? I know I’ve got most of the faults going, but I didn’t know talking too much was one of ’em.” + 

“It hasn’t been, till now.” + 

“ ‘Till now’!” + 

“You look here, Sandy Arrowsmith! You’ve been pouting like a bad brat all week. What’s the matter with you?” + 

“Well, I⁠—Gosh, it makes me tired! Here everybody is so enthusiastic about my Star of Hope spiel⁠—that note in the Morning Frontiersman, and Pickerbaugh says Orchid said it was a corker⁠—and you never so much as peep!” + 

“Didn’t I applaud? But⁠—It’s just that I hope you aren’t going to keep up this drooling.” + 

“You do, do you! Well, let me tell you I am going to keep it up! Not that I’m going to talk a lot of hot air. I gave ’em straight science, last Sunday, and they ate it up. I hadn’t realized it isn’t necessary to be mushy, to hold an audience. And the amount of good you can do! Why, I got across more Health Instruction and ideas about the value of the lab in that three-quarters of an hour than⁠—I don’t care for being a big gun but it’s fine to have people where they have to listen to what you’ve got to say and can’t butt in, way they did in Wheatsylvania. You bet I’m going to keep up what you so politely call my damn fool drooling⁠—” + 

“Sandy, it may be all right for some people, but not for you. I can’t tell you⁠—that’s one reason I haven’t said more about your talk⁠—I can’t tell you how astonished I am to hear you, who’re always sneering at what you call sentimentality, simply weeping over the Dear Little Tots!” + 

“I never said that⁠—never used the phrase and you know it. And by God! You talk about sneering! Just let me tell you that the Public Health Movement, by correcting early faults in children, by looking after their eyes and tonsils and so on, can save millions of lives and make a future generation⁠—” + 

“I know it! I love children much more than you do! But I mean all this ridiculous simpering⁠—” + 

“Well, gosh, somebody has to do it. You can’t work with people till you educate ’em. There’s where old Pick, even if he is an imbecile, does such good work with his poems and all that stuff. Prob’ly be a good thing if I could write ’em⁠—golly, wonder if I couldn’t learn to?” + 

“They’re horrible!” + 

“Now there’s a fine consistency for you! The other evening you called ’em ‘cute.’ ” + 

“I don’t have to be consistent. I’m a mere woman. You, Martin Arrowsmith, you’d be the first to tell me so. And for Dr. Pickerbaugh they’re all right, but not for you. You belong in a laboratory, finding out things, not advertising them. Do you remember once in Wheatsylvania for five minutes you almost thought of joining a church and being a Respectable Citizen? Are you going on for the rest of your life, stumbling into respectability and having to be dug out again? Will you never learn you’re a barbarian?” + 

“By God, I am! And⁠—what was that other lovely thing you called me?⁠—I’m also, soul of my soul, a damn backwoods hick! And a fine lot you help! When I want to settle down to a decent and useful life and not go ’round antagonizing people, you, the one that ought to believe in me, you’re the first one to crab!” + 

“Maybe Orchid Pickerbaugh would help you better.” + 

“She probably would! Believe me, she’s a darling, and she did appreciate my spiel at the church, and if you think I’m going to sit up all night listening to you sneering at my work and my friends⁠—I’m going to have a hot bath. Good night!” + 

In the bath he gasped that it was impossible he should have been quarreling with Leora. Why! She was the only person in the world, besides Gottlieb and Sondelius and Clif Clawson⁠—by the way, where was Clif? still in New York? didn’t Clif owe him a letter? but anyway⁠—He was a fool to have lost his temper, even if she was so stubborn that she wouldn’t adjust her opinions, couldn’t see that he had a gift for influencing people. Nobody would ever stand by him as she had, and he loved her⁠— + 

He dried himself violently; he dashed in with repentances; they told each other that they were the most reasonable persons living; they kissed with eloquence; and then Leora reflected: + 

“Just the same, my lad, I’m not going to help you fool yourself. You’re not a booster. You’re a lie-hunter. Funny, you’d think to hear about these lie-hunters, like Professor Gottlieb and your old Voltaire, they couldn’t be fooled. But maybe they were like you: always trying to get away from the tiresome truth, always hoping to settle down and be rich, always selling their souls to the devil and then going and doublecrossing the poor devil. I think⁠—I think⁠—” She sat up in bed, holding her temples in the labor of articulation. “You’re different from Professor Gottlieb. He never makes mistakes or wastes time on⁠—” + 

“He wasted time at Hunziker’s nostrum factory all right, and his title is ‘Doctor,’ not ‘Professor,’ if you must give him a⁠—” + 

“If he went to Hunziker’s he had some good reason. He’s a genius; he couldn’t be wrong. Or could he, even he? But anyway: you, Sandy, you have to stumble every so often; have to learn by making mistakes. I will say one thing: you learn from your crazy mistakes. But I get a little tired, sometimes, watching you rush up and put your neck in every noose⁠—like being a blinking orator or yearning over your Orchid.” + 

“Well, by golly! After I come in here trying to make peace! It’s a good thing you never make any mistakes! But one perfect person in a household is enough!” + 

He banged into bed. Silence. Soft sounds of “Mart⁠—Sandy!” He ignored her, proud that he could be hard with her, and so fell asleep. At breakfast, when he was ashamed and eager, she was curt. + 

“I don’t care to discuss it,” she said. + 

In that wry mood they went on Saturday afternoon to the Pickerbaughs’ snow picnic. + 