She flung over upon her bed and forced herself to contemplate what it was she had to do: To get away from the man who lay in the private ward; and from the place in which she had found a refuge till her evil angel had set him upon her track again.
Since the day, ten years ago, when she had married him, what a ruin her life had been! There had been, again and again, thank Heaven! periods of peace, periods of regained self-respect, of the enjoyment of the respect of others. These had been secured by flight only, by concealment of her whereabouts, and were of varying lengths of duration. Two years ago, with her hard-earned savings, she had paid his passage out to Africa. She had not believed him likely to earn the money to return, and had looked upon him as happily dead to her. Dead, indeed, perhaps. Until yesterday, when she had helped to lay him, unconscious, in the bed of the private ward. She guessed easily that he had learnt she was in the place, and had been about to seek her when he had been struck down.
If he should mercifully die!
Not he! she said, bitterly. Men sometimes died in delirium tremens. In every kind of illness, by every sort of accident, men died every day. Good and useful men, husbands of adoring wives, loving fathers of families, men needed by their country, by humanity, were swept mercilessly away. Only such carrion as this was left to fester upon the earth, to poison the lives of decent men and women. The doctor, standing above him, looking on the defaced image of what God, for some mysterious purpose, had made, had no thought but to restore to this foully-damaged frame the spirit and strength to do its evil work. Nurses, gentle and dutiful women, would give themselves to revive in all its corrupt activity the temporarily dormant mind and body.
Ought this to be? Where was the righteousness of it—the sense? Since that drug to which he was "so susceptible" was a deadly one, would it not be better to give him more of it? To rid society of a pest dangerous to its peace, to restore to one suffering, striving, blameless woman the happiness he had cost her?
"Would that be a crime?" she asked, and set her teeth and cried, "No, no," with hatred in her heart. Then, horrified at herself, flung herself over on her pillow, and, burying her face from the light of day, sobbed long with a tearless sobbing, bringing no relief; and so at last lay still.
She did not know if she had slept or only lain in the quiet and blank of mercifully deadened misery when, roused by the sound of her name, she lifted her head to find the matron of the little hospital standing beside her bed.
"We are having so much trouble with the D.T. patient, sister," she said. "He must not be left for a moment. I am sorry to wake you so soon, but will you go to him?"
She was so used to being alert and ready at the call of duty, that she forgot her plan had been to escape from the hospital at once, and in a minute was again in the private ward. The doctor was standing beside the bed, and Sister Marion saw he had been recalled because of the urgency of the case. For whatever reason, it was such a pleasure to see him again, to let her eyes rest upon the strong and kind and clever face—