e, mind you. The dose
will be in proportion, you know."

"As near as I can tell--it's all. Maybe now and then it's more----"

Suddenly he started up, flinging off the sheet.

"Damn you! You little hell-cat! Damn you!" he cried. "You're worming it
out of me for your own ends. You're lying!"

"_You're_ lying, and you know it!" said Anne Harding sternly.
"Here--keep still while I prepare this. You'll soon know whether I'm
lying or not when I've given it to you. _It_ doesn't lie."

He closed his eyes, feeling that he lay in the very bilge-water of
existence. A woman--a scrawny little hireling--had him, Cecil Chesney,
in her power. Had made him confess. Was about to deal mercy out to him
with a drug. He could have howled with the Chaldean: "Cursed be the day
that I was born and the hour wherein I was conceived!"

Then into his loathed flesh slipped suddenly the little sting of
steel--sweeter than the kiss of first love to the innocent.

XXIV

Sophy was amazed when she learned what had happened. So was Bellamy,
though he had more knowledge than she of the singular powers exerted by
the highest type of trained nurse. They both agreed that there was
something weird, almost legendary, about the conquest of the huge,
domineering, self-willed man by the wee nurse--a feminine echo, as it
were, of the fable of Jack the Giant Killer. But this little Jill had
climbed the bean-stalk of her wits with no axe to help her--only that
keen blade of her sane, fearless will and knowledge.

Things went on smoothly for two weeks after that. Chesney, hating the
nurse with a bitter, feverish hatred, yet submitting to her control,
clung to her with that distorted passion of the man who knows that his
well-being depends on what he hates. Temporarily he was in their
power--the power of those whom he called his "well-wishers" with that
ferocious sneer of helpless anger. He was too weak from the lack of the
accustomed doses which he had been taking surreptitiously to "fight a
good fight!" for his freedom just then. But let them wait! Just let them
wait till he got back his strength. He was afraid now that if he
rebelled against Anne Harding they would get another nurse for him, one
less independent and intelligent, who would not take things in her hands
as Anne did, who would follow the directions of that soft fool Bellamy
blindly, and keep him agonising on doses too rapidly diminished. Anne
had promised that she would not let him suf