"Well, say it, then," said Chesney drily. He was too weak just then to feel fury, but what he felt resembled it as furious action in a nightmare sometimes resembles real action—as when, for instance, one tries to swim after an enemy and finds that one is cleaving one's way through thick, clogging waves of treacle.
Anne looked straight at him.
"It's this," she said: "I want to tell you myself that I've found your extra hypodermic and supply of morphia."
She rose as she said this and stood on her guard. Chesney stared blankly for a second; then he gave a sort of animal outcry, and half sprang from the bed.
"Steady, Mr. Chesney!" called the nurse, sharp and clear. "I'm not afraid of you!"
Chesney sat, with half-suffocated, soblike sounds breaking from his great, naked, hairy chest. His hands clenched and unclenched. The bedclothes half torn from the bed by his sliding bound were tangled about his feet.
He gasped out the words—spat them at her:
"You little civet-cat. You damned little skunk! You——"
He could not articulate. His teeth ground together. He half rose, as though to leap on her.
"Keep still!" said she, in a fierce, low little voice. "You're not ready for murder—yet—I hope. Nor you've not sunk low enough to strike a woman——"