They had tickets for a play that night. It seemed best to go. The play was sad at times and Patty wept softly. RoBards’ hand hunted for hers and found it, and the two hands clung together, embracing like the Babes in the Wood with night and the wild beasts gathering about them. After a dreadful delay, there was a more dreadful operation, and once more RoBards blessed the names of Morton, Jackson, and Wells for the sleep they gave his beloved during the nightmare of the knives. But only for a while, since the pain, after a brief frustration, flowed back like a dammed river when the dam gives way. When he demanded more of the drug, the physician protested: “We must not be careless. It is a habit-forming drug, you know.” But pain was a habit-forming poison, too. The operation was too late to do more than prolong the day of execution. All over the world men were delving into the ancient mystery. But nobody knew. Nobody could find out a why or a wherefore. Some day somebody would surely stumble on the cause and then the cure would turn up. The answer would be simple perhaps. But it would be too late for Patty. What followed was unspeakable, too cruel to recount, beyond the reach of sympathy. Minutes seemingly unbearable heaped up into hours, hours into mornings, afternoons, slow evenings, eternal, lonely nights. Days and nights became weeks, months. The doctor, weary of the spectacle of Patty’s woe, gave the drug recklessly. It had passed the point of mattering whether it were habit-forming or not. And then immunity began. As the disease itself was the ironic parody of life, so the precious gift of immunity became the hideous denial of relief. The solace in drugs lost all potency. The poor wretch was naked before the fiends. The hell the Bible pronounced upon the non-elect was brought up to earth before its time. Dr. Chirnside slept now with his fathers, but his successor called upon Patty to minister comfort. He was a stern reversion to the Puritan type that deified its own granite. When he was gone, Patty was in dismay indeed. For now the torture was perfected by a last exquisite subtlety, the only thing left to increase it: the feeling that it was deserved. Remorse was added to the weapons of this invisible Torquemada. From Patty’s blenched, writhen lips, between her gnashing teeth slipped the words: “Honey, it’s a punishment on me for my wickedness.” “No, no, no! What wickedness have you ever done?” “Oh, you know well enough. You cried hard enough once. And there have been so many cruel things I have done, so many mean evil thoughts, so many little goodnesses I put off. God is remembering those things against me.” “You make God more cruel than man. How could he be? It’s blasphemy to blame him for your misery.”