“It was very sudden,” she said in a low voice. “We were talking—I was saying something—all at once his face changed so—oh, it makes me shudder to think of it. It seemed—I don’t know—like—almost like a devil’s face! And his eyes seemed to turn in—he was all purple—and his lips were all wet—it was like foam—oh, it was dreadful—too awful!”
Katharine was startled and shocked. She could say nothing, but pressed the small hand in anxious sympathy. Hester smiled faintly, and then almost laughed, but instantly recovered herself again. She was not at all a hysterical woman, and, as she said, she could never cry.
“That’s only the beginning,” she continued. “I won’t tell you how he looked. He fell over on the divan and rolled about and caught at the cushions and at me—at everything. He didn’t know me at all, and he never spoke an articulate word—not one. But he groaned, and seemed to gnash his teeth—I believe it went on for hours, while I tried to help him, to hold him, to keep him from hurting himself. And then—after a long, long time—all at once, his face changed again, little by little, and—will you believe it, dear? He was asleep!”
“How strange!” exclaimed Katharine.
“Yes—wasn’t it? But it seemed so merciful, and I was so glad. And I sat by him all night and watched him. Then early, early this morning—it was just grey through the big skylight of the studio—he waked and looked at me, and seemed so surprised to find himself there. I told him he had fallen asleep—which was true, you know—and he seemed a little dazed, and went to bed very quietly. But to-day, when he got up—it was I who sent you word not to come, because he had told me about the sitting—I told him everything, and insisted upon sending for Doctor Routh. He seemed terribly distressed, but wouldn’t let me send, and he walked up and down the room, looking at me as though his heart would break. But he said nothing, except that he begged and begged me not to send for the doctor.”
“And he’s quite himself now, you say?”
“Wait—the worst is coming. At last he sat down beside me, and said—oh, so tenderly—that he had something to say to which I must listen, though he was afraid that it would pain me very much—that he had thought it would never be necessary to tell me, because he had imagined that he was quite cured when he had married me. Of course, I told him that—well, never mind what I said. You know how I love him.”
Katharine knew, and it was incomprehensible to her, but she pressed the little hand once more.
“He told me that nearly ten years ago he had been ill with inflammatory rheumatism—that’s the name of it, and it seems that it’s excruciatingly painful. It was in Paris, and the doctors gave him morphia. He could not give it up afterwards.”
“And he takes morphia still?” asked Katharine, anxiously enough, for she knew what it meant.