that infernal house like some
tropical bog-flower; she expanded, she shot up.

"Once, at twilight, I peeped out and saw her sitting on the side porch,
her chin in her hand, staring and staring, and laughing, now and then,
and shutting her eyes. It made me shiver.

"That warm, damp dusk was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to
thicken, thicken, as I looked. A quick instinct warned me to look for
George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue
... like a caught fly. To let go--to drift in a warm, relaxing current
... I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net
... I felt for him so.

"I went to her mother.

"'Call that girl in!' I said roughly. 'What's the matter with her?'

"She wouldn't look at me.

"'Come, what's all this? Out with it!' I said. But she stood there,
obstinate as a mule, and perfectly silent. You can't do anything with
them, then.

"Well, it was like fighting filthy cobwebs: walking through them,
breathing them, pulling them off from your mouth, your wrists, your
ankles! Not that I felt anything directly, mind you--I could have
lived there for years--alone. But it was all up with Mynie and George,
they were done for, like the others ... like the others.

"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast? What terrible
energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place? What
distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there? How long ago? _How long
ago?_ Are there centres of negation? Oh, I tell you, the
table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply
incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!

"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer
and taints endlessly?

"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my
eyes--ugh!

"There had to be an end, of course. I asked where she was going one
afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.

"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly. 'I'll settle with your
mother. Do you understand?'

"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of
the open window.

"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly. I could see
poor George tremble--the porch vines shook.

"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.

"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said--but I didn't say
'slut.' And she went. It was the only time I was ever brutal to a