made it,
and let him have it without insisting on cream or sugar--she had her
compassions for these poor, mad-willed beings), she lifted the tray from
the bed, and, glancing at her watch again, drew up a chair and sat down
facing him.

"Ten minutes yet, sir, to wait," she said. "And I've something I want to
say to you."

"Well, say it, then," said Chesney drily. He was too weak just then to
feel fury, but what he felt resembled it as furious action in a
nightmare sometimes resembles real action--as when, for instance, one
tries to swim after an enemy and finds that one is cleaving one's way
through thick, clogging waves of treacle.

Anne looked straight at him.

"It's this," she said: "I want to tell you myself that I've found your
extra hypodermic and supply of morphia."

She rose as she said this and stood on her guard. Chesney stared blankly
for a second; then he gave a sort of animal outcry, and half sprang from
the bed.

"Steady, Mr. Chesney!" called the nurse, sharp and clear. "_I'm not
afraid of you!_"

Chesney sat, with half-suffocated, soblike sounds breaking from his
great, naked, hairy chest. His hands clenched and unclenched. The
bedclothes half torn from the bed by his sliding bound were tangled
about his feet.

He gasped out the words--spat them at her:

"You little civet-cat. You damned little skunk! You----"

He could not articulate. His teeth ground together. He half rose, as
though to leap on her.

"Keep _still_!" said she, in a fierce, low little voice. "You're not
ready for murder--yet--I hope. Nor you've not sunk low enough to strike
a woman----"

"Strike you! You little b----h, I could break you in bits with my bare
hands!"

They stayed glaring at each other. It was the glare that a huge dog and
a dauntless little cat exchange when death is in the air. Then Anne
spoke:

"Be a man ... for Gawd's sake ... _pretend_ to be a man!" she said.

Chesney blinked and gasped with fury and weakness, as though she had
spat in his face.

Anne followed it up.

"Look here," said she; "I'm trying with all my might to save you from
hell ... yes, _hell_, sir!" She pounded her little brown fist against
her other palm. "And you want to kill me for it. But I'm stronger than
you are. Yes, I am! For why? For why my nerves ain't rotten with that
filthy poison you love like mother's milk. And I'm going to save you
whether you will or no! God or the devil helping me--I don't much care
which--I'm goi