It was all very muddled and confused to me, and I made no attempt to talk. I heard her begging me to “give him back” to her, that she loved him, that I had “poisoned his mind” against her--threats and beseeching oddly mingled. But the telegrams seemed to sober her a little, for I remember her becoming abruptly more quiet, almost maudlin, and pouring out an endless story about Boyde who was, apparently, “full of money ... full of liquor” ... and full of anger against me because _he_ had been “supporting” me and I had shown “base ingratitude.”... I was too bewildered to feel much. It numbed me. I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t realize how Boyde had deliberately left me alone so long. Something monstrous and inhuman touched it all. She went away eventually in a calmer state, though leaving me in a condition that was far from calm. She went, begging me to “send him back” to her when he came home, but half realizing, I gathered, that the boot was on the other leg, so far as Boyde and myself were 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.