Ann Browning, wearing a flowered dressing robe over gray silk pajamas, stood at the other side of the bed, half bending over Vicky.
In her right hand Ann held a small hypodermic syringe with a polished metal barrel and long, pinlike needle.
Ann looked up at him across the width of the bed. Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open.
"Phil Courtney," she said, "what on earth are you doing here?"
"Not you," he said. "Oh, my God, not you?"
He does not remember saying this, though it has often been quoted against him since.
What he does remember is every detail of the room: colors, outlines, even the fall of shadows. The gleam of the sharp needle. The glass water-carafe, and a little round box of white tablets, among bottles on the bedside table. The druggy medicinal smell of the room, since the windows were closed. The hypnotic drive of the rain. The vague, pinching shadow, the movement of the lips and muscles as at pain stirring again, which had begun to creep across the face of the unconscious Vicky Fane.
Pain…
Most of all, he remembered Ann's frightened, horrified face as she looked back at him.
"You don't think," she cried, "that I —?" She flung the needle from her, clumsily. It landed on the coverlet and rolled.