"You spoke of cruelty. You had to endure physical cruelty?"
"Worse, to see it endured by others, dumb, helpless creatures, by my own dog."
A great shudder ran through her.
"I can't talk of it," she said. "But it made me what I am. Can you do anything for me? Why do you look at me like that?"
For, at her word about the dog, the doctor had fallen into a tense reverie, looking steadily upon her, yet as one who sees little or nothing. He roused himself quickly.
"Tell me something of the symptoms of your mental malady," he said.
"These fancies that distress you, of what nature are they?"
She told him. Many of them were symptoms well known to all those who have suffered acutely after some great shock, imagined sounds, movements, and so forth. The doctor listened. He had heard such a story many times before.
"I, I am full of these ghastly, these degrading fancies," Mrs. Wilson cried, with a sort of large indignation against herself, and yet an uncertain terror. "Is it not—?"
She suddenly stopped speaking.
"There's some one at your door," she said, after a second or two of apparent attention to some sound without.