on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one
above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one
after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I
would, repent as I would."

"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.

"Morphia," she replied.

There was a long silence.

"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my
misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my
friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my
sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have
heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and
water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one
end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch
along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming
towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by
inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor
wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as
drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange
faces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back
to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly
remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine
music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered,
devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies
and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks
out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could
see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection
of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't
know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who
spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac
gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the
drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine
out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung
her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her
of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She
is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a
little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I
should know the room aga