“Be quiet—­be quiet!  I hate him.  I won’t try.  I won’t be tortured—­oh, why can’t you all leave me alone!” She began to sob and moan under her breath, careless even of a possible passerby.  Fortunately there was no one, and they were already within sight of home.  Esther, very white, supported the shaking woman with her arm and they hurried on together.  At the door she would still have accompanied her but Mary flung herself angrily from her hold and ran up the stairs with sudden feverish strength.  Esther turned into the living room and dropped into the nearest chair.

She was still sitting there without having removed either hat or gloves when, a little later, Callandar entered.

“Well, nurse,” with a faint smile, “how are things to-day?” His quick eye had noticed in a moment the girl’s closed eyes and listless attitude, but nothing in his tone betrayed it.

“Very well, I think, until a little while ago.  We were late in getting home from the dressmaker’s—­”

“I see.  You look rather done up.  The fact is you are overdoing things.  Rather foolish, don’t you think?”

“No,” stubbornly.  “I am all right.”

“You are exhausted and there is no need.  Things are going well.  The dose is steadily diminishing, more quickly than she suspects.  It looks as if we might begin to breathe again.  It is a great gain to feel reasonably sure that she has no more of the stuff hidden anywhere.  If she had, she would have used it during that last crisis.”

The girl in the chair winced.  She hated even to think of the night to which his words referred.  “Yes,” she said, “but—­but there won’t be any more times like that, will there?”

“Yes,” grimly.  “We are not through yet.  But every crisis will be a little easier—­if things go as they are going.”

Esther sighed.  “It is very terrible, isn’t it?” she said.  “And really it doesn’t seem fair, for it wasn’t her fault; in the beginning she didn’t know.  And she does suffer so.”

“We must not think of it in that way.  It helps more to think of the suffering she is escaping.  What she is going through now is saving her, body and soul.  It is taking her out of torment and leading her back to life, and sanity.  You don’t know, but I do, and any struggle, any suffering is mild compared to the horrors before her if she kept on.  She was taking some cocaine too.  The word means nothing to you, but to a physician it spells hell.  So you see—­it gives one strength.”

Esther sat up and straightened her collar.  “I’m ashamed of myself,” she said.  “No wonder you want another nurse.  But I won’t resign yet.  And I wanted to ask you—­do you think it is necessary now to be with her whenever she goes out?  She hates it so.  I think she is getting to hate me, too.  Where could she possibly get the stuff?  None of our local stores would sell it without a prescription.”

“I know.  But in a case like this you can never be sure of anything.  No, we must not relax in the slightest.  Even as it is, I am continually afraid.”  He began to pace the room restlessly.  “There may be a weak spot somewhere, some loop-hole we have forgotten.  I think the druggists are safe and the mail is watched.  That last supply, you are sure it was all destroyed?”