Presently she returns. In her left hand is a small glass phial, containing many little tablets. As she crosses to you, she extends her right hand with the palm up. It is a slender, delicate hand, yet there is a look of strength to it, for all its whiteness. You lay a bill in it, and she hands you the phial. That is all. You leave, and she closes the Oregon pine door quietly behind you.
As she turns about toward the divan again, she hesitates. Her eyes wander to a closed door at one side of the room. She takes a half step toward it, and then draws back, her shoulders against the door. Her fingers are clenched tightly, the nails sinking into the soft flesh of her palms; but still her eyes are upon the closed door. They are staring and wild, like those of a beast at bay. She is trembling from head to foot.
For a minute she stands there, fighting her grim battle, alone and without help. Then, as with a last mighty effort, she drags her eyes from the closed door and glances toward the divan. With unsteady step she returns to it and throws herself down among the pillows.
Her shoulders move to dry sobs, she clutches the pillows frantically in her strong fingers, she rolls from side to side, as people do who are suffering physical torture; but at last she relaxes and lies quiet.
A clock ticks monotonously from the mantel. Its sound fills the whole room, growing with fiendish intensity to a horrid din that pounds upon taut, raw nerves. She covers her ears with her palms to shut it out, but it bores insistently through. She clutches her thick hair with both hands; her fingers are entangled in it. For a long minute she lies thus, prone, and then her slippered feet commence to fly up and down as she kicks her toes in rapid succession into the unresisting divan.
Suddenly she leaps to her feet and rushes toward the mantel.
“Damn you!” she screams, and, seizing the clock, dashes it to pieces upon the tiled hearth.
Then her eyes leap to the closed door; and now, without any hesitation, almost defiantly, she crosses the room, opens the door, and disappears within the bathroom beyond.
Five minutes later the door opens again, and the woman comes back into the living room. She is humming a gay little tune. Stopping at a table, she takes a cigarette from a carved wooden box and lights it. Then she crosses to the baby grand piano in one corner, and commences to play. Her voice, rich and melodious, rises in a sweet old song of love and youth and happiness.
Something has mended her shattered nerves. Upon the hearth lies the shattered clock. It can never be mended.