"Give me a drink," she said feverishly. "Water! water! water!" She
panted, and her tongue protruded slightly. Her husband turned away, his
shoulders twitching. The nurse held a silver goblet to the woman's lips.
She drank greedily, then scowled up at the doctor.

"You missed it," she said. "I should be glad, for I hate you, only you
give me more relief than they. They are afraid. They tried to fool me,
the idiots! But they didn't try it twice. I bit."

She laughed and threw her arms above her head. The loose sleeves of her
gown fell back and disclosed arms speckled as if from an explosion of
gunpowder.

"Just an ordinary morphine fiend," thought the doctor. "And she is the
wife of John Schuyler!"

An hour after dinner he told the husband and nurse to go to bed. For a
while he read, the woman sleeping profoundly. The house was absolutely
still, or seemed to be. Had pandemonium reigned he could hardly have
heard an echo of it from this isolated room. The window was open, but
looked upon roofs and back yards; no sound of carriage wheels rose to
break the quiet. Despite the stillness, the doctor had to strain his ear
to catch the irregular breathing of the sick woman. He had a singular
feeling, although the most unimaginative of men, that this third floor,
containing only himself and the woman, had been sliced from the rest of
the house and hung suspended in space, independent of natural laws. It
was after the book had ceased to interest him that the idea shaped
itself, born of another, as yet unacknowledged, skulking in the recesses
of his brain. At length he laid aside the book, and going to the bed,
looked down upon the woman, coldly, reflectively--exactly as he had