concerned. She was still angry with me in a vague unjust sort of way, not knowing whom to believe probably, nor exactly what had happened. She flounced out of the room in a whirl of excitement and cockney sentences, and I never saw her again. My tray arrived within a few minutes of her welcome departure.... I spent an appalling night. Boyde, the yellow-haired woman, Mrs. Bernstein, the old German, the spider, steps on the stairs a hundred times that came to nothing.... I wished once or twice that I were dead.... The door did not open....
It never rains but it pours. Two days later the doctor came in the afternoon, in the blackest mood I had yet encountered. I rather expected his visit, and though dreading it, I also longed for it, longed to see someone--a human being. He came sharp at three, attended to me, and left again. The visit lasted perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, and during the whole time he spoke no single word, not even greeting me when he entered, or saying good-bye when he went out. His face was black, aged, terrible in the suffering it wore. I had meant to tell him at last about Boyde, unable any longer to keep it to myself. I simply must tell someone. But not a syllable could I get out. When the old German had gone, however, I felt sure it was his own mysterious suffering, and not any feeling against myself, that caused his strange behaviour. I knew, too, that he would come again, and thus I got some comfort from his silent, rapid visit. This was on the fourth day since Boyde deserted; it was the day on which he came back.
He came back; his money had given out; he had nowhere to sleep.
It was night, somewhere about ten o'clock. I was falling into an uneasy doze, the kind of doze that introduced the spider, when the door opened softly. There was no knock. I had heard no footstep. The door just opened and he came in.
Every nerve in me became alert. Truth to tell, there
was no emotion in me of any sort or kind. I was numb,
