This time she did not answer. I put my shoulder to the door, and exerted all my strength. It is not a thing to boast of that I am a man of great muscular power, and that on this occasion I exulted in it. The evil spirit within me urged me on. As I strained my muscles there was silence in the room; for a little while Barbara's voice was not heard. The door creaked, yielded, then burst open with a crash. Annette stood upright, her cold, gray eyes fixed upon me. She was a woman of indomitable firmness, and in my knowledge of her she never showed the least trace of fear. My wife cowered on the floor, clad only in her nightdress, and in a more disgraceful condition than when I found her lying at the door of my chambers in the Strand. Her body was trembling and convulsed, her features twitched, there was a nameless terror in her eyes. The atmosphere of the apartment reeked with the fumes of liquor. "You are a faithful servant," I said to Annette, "to encourage your mistress in these disgusting orgies. You have a human excuse, I suppose. It pays you." "I am paid with ingratitude," she answered, composedly. "To keep this"--pointing to my wife--"from the other servants in the house--is not that faithful service?" "And to give false evidence against your master," I retorted, "that also is faithful service, is it not? I know you for what you are, Annette--a panderer to vice and infamy." "That is defamation, monsieur, I can make you pay for it." "Do so. It will rid me of you. I am willing to pay the price." This bickering was stopped by a piercing scream from Barbara. "See there--see there!" the wretched creature shrieked. "Those devils are creeping in again! Keep them off--keep them off! Save me--save me!" She bit, she snarled, she tore at the phantoms. I cannot describe the scene. My pen halts, my fingers refuse to trace the words. I remember helping Annette to lift my wife to the bed; I remember noting with morbid curiosity the singular phase in her delirium that she clung to Annette for protection while she clawed at me; I remember her falling from the bed, and creeping under it to hide herself from the imaginary terrors which afflict the dipsomaniac; I recall her delirious entreaties for more brandy, her shrieks for mercy, her ribald utterances when, for a brief space, these terrors ceased, her shuddering paroxysms, her tears, her hysterical sobs. Good God! Can we call such beings human? Should there not be a law to put them under restraint, to treat them as we treat the mad, to free the innocent partners of their unspeakable degradation from the horrible curse which weighs like a blight upon despairing hearts?