his hands. I raised myself in bed, never taking my eyes off him.
"I got your telegrams. Have you nothing to say? No explanation? Have you brought any food, any money? You have had money--all this time."
Silence, broken only by another gulp.
"I saw you take the money out of the drawer. I said nothing because I thought you were going to get me things. I trusted you."
He turned all at once and faced me, though keeping his eyes always steadily on the floor. The tears were streaming down his face like rain.
"Are you tired?" I asked. "You'd better lie down and go to sleep. You can talk to-morrow."
It was this that finished him. He had reached the breaking point.
There is no heroism in me; it was simply that I needed him, rotten as he was, heartless, cruel, vile as well; I funked another spell of that awful loneliness; I knew him now for a coward and a beast, but I could not face another night alone. That complete loneliness had been too horrible. A wild animal was better than that. Boyde was of the hyena type, but a hyena was better than a spider. It was neither generosity nor nobility that made me listen to his ridiculous and lying story of an "awful and terrible temptation," of a "fearful experience with a woman" who had drugged him.... The tale spun itself far into the night, the razor and the confession were under my pillow, I fell asleep, dead with exhaustion, while he was still explaining something about a "woman named Pauline M----" who had "deceived me in a most extraordinary way...."
The following day, in the morning--Dr. Huebner came unexpectedly. Boyde had gone out before I woke. This time he was a radiant Dr. Jekyll, and I told him the whole story. His only comment, looking severely at me through the big spectacles, was: "I expected it. He is a confidence man. I knew it the first time I saw him. You have kicked the devil out, of course?"
