From the open window she could see him walk leisurely down the lane to the street, and pick his way carefully over the broken planks of the sidewalk to the avenue. Then he disappeared behind the short shutters that crossed the door of the saloon.
For some reason this seemed the one thing unbearable in her experience. The bitterness of it all welled up and overflowed in a few hot tears that stung her hands as they dropped slowly from the burning eyes. It was a long time before the little blinds swung out, and the doctor appeared with her husband. Preston was talking affably, fluently, and now and then he tapped the doctor familiarly on his shoulders to emphasize a remark. Sommers responded enough to keep his companion's interest. Once he gently restrained him, as the hatless man plunged carelessly forward in front of an approaching car. As the pair neared the house, the woman at the window could hear the rapid flow of talk. Preston was excited, self-assertive, and elaborately courteous.
"After you, doctor. Will you come upstairs to my room?" she caught as they entered the gate. "My wife, doctor, is all right, good woman; but, like the rest of them, foolish."
And the babbling continued until some one closed the heavy door at the head of the stairs. Then there was noise, as of a man getting into bed. In time it was quiet, and just as she was about to make the effort of finding out what had happened, Sommers came downstairs and signed to her to sit down.
"I have given him a hypodermic injection. He won't trouble you any more to-night," he said, staring dreamily out into the twilight.
CHAPTER XI
"This is too much for you," Sommers observed finally.
After his meditation he had come to much the same obvious conclusion that
Miss M'Gann had formed previously. The woman moved wearily in her chair.
"It can't go on," the doctor proceeded. "No one can tell what he might do in his accesses—what violence he would do to you, to himself."
"He may get better," she suggested.