"I guess you'll do well enough without any painkiller," he said to himself. "Doctors are expensive. Anyway, I'll be back by midnight." He threw more wood on the fire, blew out the candle, and, closing the door behind him, set off down the trail to the town--where a faro-bank soon acquired the bill Jessica had given him. CHAPTER XVIII THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK It was pitch-dark when Jessica reached the sanatorium, though she went like a whirlwind, the chill damp smell of the dewy balsams in her nostrils, the dust rising ghost-like behind the rapid hoofs. She found David Stires anxious and peevish over her late coming. Sitting beside him as he ate his supper, and reading to him afterward, she had little time for coherent thought; all the while she was maintaining her self-control with an effort. Since she had ridden away that afternoon, she felt as if years had gone over her with all their changes. She was oppressed with a new sense of fate, of power beyond and stronger than herself, and her mind was enveloped in a haze of futurity. She felt a relief when the old man grew tired and was wheeled to his bedroom. Left alone, her reflections returned. She began to be tortured. She tried to read--the printed characters swam beyond her comprehension. At length she drew a hood over her head and stole out on to the wide porch. It was only nine o'clock, and along the gravel paths that wound among the shrubbery a few dim forms were strolling--she caught the scent of a cigar and the sound of a woman's laugh. The air was crisp and bracing, with a promise of frost and painted leaves. She gazed down across the dark gulches toward the town, a straggling design pricked in blinking yellow points. Halfway between, folded in the darkness, lay the green shelf and the cabin to which her thought recurred with a kind of compulsion. Her eyes searched the darkness anxiously. He had seemed dangerously ill; he might die, perhaps. If he did, what would it be for her, his wife, but freedom from a galling bond? She thought of the violin playing. Had that been but the soul's swan-song, the last cry of his stained and desolate spirit before it passed from this world that knew its temptation and its fall? If she could only know what the doctor had said! There was no moon, but the stars were glowing like tiny, green-gilt coals, and the yellow road lay plain and clear. With a sudden determination she drew her light cloak closely about her, stepped down, sped across the grass to a footpath, and so to the road. As she ran on down the curving stretch under the trees, moving like a hastening, gray phantom through a purple world of shadows, the crackling slip of bank-paper that lay in her bosom seemed to burn her flesh. She was stealing away to gaze upon the outcast who had shamed and humbled her--going, she knew not why, with burning cheeks and hammering heart.