“Surely you have at least one more,” she said. “In fact I have written to her to tell her of your recovery.”
“Her?” He looked at the nurse out of ghastly eyes.
“Miss Myra Stebbings.”
“Oh, my God!” said he, and fainted.
Whereat the nurse, anxious to bring him comforting tidings was exceedingly troubled. The shock put him back for two or three days. He grew light-headed, and raved about a woman called Olivia, and about all sorts of strange and incomprehensible things. When he regained his senses it was an awakening to a life of even more terrifying consternation than before. Myra, he learned, had called daily at the hospital—to be denied access to him till he should be in a fit state to receive her. The nurse told him of her first visit the morning after the accident and of the newspaper paragraph which she had chanced to read. But if Myra knew, surely Olivia knew. And Olivia, knowing him to have been for weeks at death’s door, had treated him, as though he had already passed through that door to the other side. Horror gripped him. He questioned the nurse. This Miss Stebbings, had she left no message? No, she was a woman of few words. She had said, in an unemotional way: “I’ll come in again to-morrow.”
“For God’s sake don’t let her see me,” he cried.
But after a while he countermanded the request. He would learn the worst, and meet steadily the supreme punishment, the tale of Olivia’s implacable hatred. There were degrees in a woman’s scorn. Much he knew he had justly incurred; but his sick frame shuddered at this maximum of contempt and loathing. Ill-conditioned dog he avowed himself; yet to let him die, for aught she knew, like a dog, without sign or word of interest . . . it transcended thought.
“Are you sure there has been no other lady? Not a letter of enquiry? Nothing?”
“You’ll make yourself bad again, if you worry like that,” said the nurse.
“I wish to God I could,” said he; “and that would be the end of it all.”