He caught her by the shoulder and held her at arm's-length. She writhed
and struggled and cursed. Her oaths might have been learned in the
gutter. She kicked at him and strove to reach him with her nails,
clawing the air. She looked like a witch on a broomstick.

"What an exquisite bride she was!" he thought. "And what columns of
rubbish have been printed about her and her entertainments!"

The woman was shrieking and struggling.

"Give it to me! You brute! You fiend! I always hated you! Give it to me!
I am dying! I am dying! Help! Help!" But the walls were padded, and she
knew it.

He permitted her to fling herself upon him, easily brushing aside her
jumping fingers and snapping teeth. He knew that her agony was
frightful. Her body was a net-work of hungry nerves. The diseased pulp
of her brain had ejected every thought but one. She squirmed like an old
autumn leaf about to fall. Her ugly face became tragic. The words shot
from her dry contracted throat: "Give me the morphine! Give me the
morphine!"

Suddenly realizing the immutability of the man in whose power she was,
she sprang from him and ran frantically about the room, uttering harsh
bleatlike cries. She pulled open the drawers of a chest, rummaging among
its harmless contents, gasping, quivering, bounding, as her tortured
nerves commanded. When she had littered the floor with the contents of
the chest she ran about screaming hopelessly. The doctor shuddered, but
he thought of the four innocent people in her power and in his.