Helen turned at his call, and looked at him for a space with dilated eyes. In that space Hayward saw that her cell was padded throughout, floor and walls, and that there was not a flower or a flower-pot in the room, that her clothing was torn, her hair streaming and dishevelled. Before he had time to make any inferences from these facts, Helen, still gazing at him with that peculiar stare, started across the room to him, saying gladly, "Oh, you have come to take me out driving!" Nearly to the door she stopped. Slowly her face changed its whole expression. The wide-eyed stare gave way, and the old Helen looked at him a moment from her eyes. In another moment her face was convulsed in a spasm of aversion. "Go away! Go away!" she cried out wildly as she turned from him. Retreating into a far corner of her cell, she called to the attendant, "Oh, save me!—take him away!—keep him away!" "Why, Helen, don’t you know me?" Hayward called to her. "Yes, yes, I know you, but in God’s name leave me! Don’t let him in! Don’t let him in!" she pleaded with the physician, who also had come to the door. "I’ll not hurt you, Helen. You know I’ll not hurt you. Don’t run from me. You know I’ll not hurt you." Hayward motioned to the physician to unlock the door. Whereupon Helen uttered a blood-curdling scream as she cowered back into her corner. "Don’t! Don’t!! He has already hurt me, doctor! Go away! Go _away_! The poison of your blood is in my veins and will not come out! It is polluted, forever polluted! A knife—_a knife_! Give me a knife, doctor, that I may let it out. Please give me a knife. I have prayed you daily for one and you won’t give it to me. Kill me—_save me_! My blood is _unclean_, and he did it! My baby was black, _black_!—and its negro blood is in my veins! A knife, doctor! A knife!! Oo-o-a-ugh!! I’ll tear it out, then!"—and she clawed and tore and bit at her wrists in an agony of endeavour to purge her veins of the tainted fluid which had brought to life that fright, her baby. Hayward stood helpless and terror-stricken before the door, and his staying only drove Helen into more horrible paroxysms. "Come away, man, come away," the doctor commanded; and he obeyed weakly. "Great God," he said when he was back in the physician’s office, "that is awful, awful! How can she live, doctor, if she is shaken and torn by such dementia as that?" "I cannot say whether she will live, Mr. Graham," the doctor replied; "but her periods of dementia give her the only relief that she enjoys. As a remedy for exhaustion they are our only hope for her life so far appearing." "I don’t understand," said Graham, "how such suffering as that can be a relief from exhaustion." "I did not say that," said the doctor. "I said her _periods of dementia_ give her relief from exhaustion. As I said before, Mr. Graham, this is an absolutely unique case. It is—" "Unique in what?" asked Graham.