The two men did not look at each other again. Gordon sank into his chair. James went out of the room and upstairs. He knocked on the door of the sick-room, and Mrs. Blair, the village nurse, answered his knock. She was a large woman in a voluminous wrapper. Her face had a settled expression of gravity, almost of sternness. She looked at James. The screams from the writhing mass of agony in the bed did not appear [pg 257] to be moving her, whereas she in reality was herself screwed to such a pitch of mental torture of pity that she was scarcely able to move. She was rigid.
"Doctor Gordon sent me," whispered James. "He wished me to see her. He asked me to say to you that he would like to see you for a minute in the office."
The woman did not move for a second. Then she whispered close to James's ear, "It is on the bureau."
James nodded. They passed each other. James entered the room and closed the door. A lamp was burning on a table with a screen before it. The bed was in shadow. The screams never ceased. They were not human. James could not realize that the beautiful woman whom he had known was making such sounds. They sounded like the shrieks of an animal. All the soul seemed gone from them.
James approached the bed. There was a roll of dark eyes at him. Then a voice ghastly beyond description, like the snarl of a hungry beast, came from between the straight white lips. "More, more! Give me more! Be quick!"
James hesitated.
"Quick, quick!" demanded the voice.
James crossed the room to the dresser. The sick woman now interspersed her screams with the word "quick!"
James filled a hypodermic syringe from a glass on the bureau and approached the bed again. He bared a shuddering arm and inserted the instrument quickly. "Now try and be quiet," he said. "You will go to sleep."
Then he went out of the room. The screams had ceased. As James approached the stair another door opened, and Clemency in a wrapper looked out. She was very pale, her eyes were distended with fear, and her mouth was trembling. "How is she?" she whispered.