"Don't! Don't!! He has already hurt me, doctor! Go away! Go away! The poison of your blood is in my veins and will not come out! It is polluted, forever polluted! A knife—a knife! Give me a knife, doctor, that I may let it out. Please give me a knife. I have prayed you daily for one and you won't give it to me. Kill me—save me! My blood is unclean, and he did it! My baby was black, black!—and its negro blood is in my veins! A knife, doctor! A knife!! Oo-o-a-ugh!! I'll tear it out, then!"—and she clawed and tore and bit at her wrists in an agony of endeavour to purge her veins of the tainted fluid which had brought to life that fright, her baby.
Hayward stood helpless and terror-stricken before the door, and his staying only drove Helen into more horrible paroxysms.
"Come away, man, come away," the doctor commanded; and he obeyed weakly.
"Great God," he said when he was back in the physician's office, "that is awful, awful! How can she live, doctor, if she is shaken and torn by such dementia as that?"
"I cannot say whether she will live, Mr. Graham," the doctor replied; "but her periods of dementia give her the only relief that she enjoys. As a remedy for exhaustion they are our only hope for her life so far appearing."
"I don't understand," said Graham, "how such suffering as that can be a relief from exhaustion."
"I did not say that," said the doctor. "I said her periods of dementia give her relief from exhaustion. As I said before, Mr. Graham, this is an absolutely unique case. It is—"
"Unique in what?" asked Graham.
"It is unique in this," said the physician: "It is in her sane moments—in her lucid intervals, when she is fully conscious of her condition and situation—that she raves and tears herself and cries out against the devils that are torturing her. It is in such moments that her eyes have the light of reason in them. On the other hand, it is when she is insane, demented—when her mind is unhinged and wandering—that she is quiet and peaceful and happy. The letter you enjoyed was written when she was crazy. The one that tortured you was written when she was clothed and in her right mind."
"My God, doctor, that cannot be! Do not tell me that!" cried Hayward, shaken like a reed. "Tell me whether there is hope for her?"