she was not yet ready to talk to any one, even the nurse, for whom she
had a casually friendly feeling based on dependence and continued
association. She wished to think--dear God, to be able to think
again!--and there seemed so much thinking to be done and so little
time in which to do it. Her heart dropped a beat as she realized that.
On how much time could she safely count, she wondered. A week? A few
days? It had never been less than a week, until the last episode. She
turned from the thought of that with a sick shudder, but memory
dragged it up and ruthlessly held it before her--the hour, the moment,
the very place she was sitting when it occurred. She had been talking
to a friend, who unconsciously said something that annoyed and excited
her. She saw now that friend's face growing dim before her eyes--at
first puzzled, then frightened, then writhing and twisting into
hideous shapes, she thought, until in her horror she had struck at it.
She must not think of that, she knew, as she set her teeth and pulled
herself up short. She had a will of extraordinary strength, her
physicians and nurses had conceded, and she resolved that it should
serve her now. With grim determination she pieced together the patches
of memory left to her. She had had three days then--three short days.
She dared not count on even that much respite now, though she might
possibly have it and more. But one day--surely Providence would let
her have one day--one _last_ day. Her friends and the specialists had
begun to talk of asylums. She had heard whispers of them before she
succumbed to this last attack; and though her memory of what occurred
in it was mercifully vague, she dimly recalled struggles and the
shrieks of some one in agony--her own shrieks, she knew now, though
she had not known it then. It all meant that she was getting worse and
more "difficult." It all meant chronic invalidism, constant care,
eventual confinement.