A
sweat started out on his brow and he found himself dabbing June
Bowman's face with a wet cold towel.
"Witch hazel?" he asked mechanically.
Suddenly he was so tired that his legs seemed incapable of support. He
wiped the razor blade and put it away with a lax nerveless hand. He
realized that he had been again at the point of murder. He had been
saved by the narrowest margin in the world. For a moment the fact that
he had been saved absorbed him, and then the imminent danger of his
position, his weakness, filled him with the sense of failure, a heavy
feeling of hopelessness. His prayers and singing, his plans for
redemption, for a godly life, had threatened to end at the first
assault of evil.
He temporarily overcame his dejection at the memory of Flavilla. Doctor
Markley lived in a larger town than Nantbrook, a dozen miles beyond the
fields and green hills, and he must get him by telephone. Then there
was the problem of payment. The doctor, he knew, would expect his fee,
two dollars, immediately from such an applicant as himself; and he had
less than a dollar. He explained something of this over the wire,
adding that if Markley would see Flavilla at the end of the day the
money would be forthcoming. That, the crisp, disembodied tone replied,
was impossible; he must call in the middle of the morning, but no
difficulty would be made about his bill; Doret could send the amount to
him promptly.
He hurried back to the house with this information, and found Bella
seated in the kitchen, the inevitable cigarette throwing up its ribbon
of smoke from her fingers, and June Bowman at her shoulder.
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