feigned to drop asleep after a few minutes,
watching her all the time from under his lowered lids--detesting
her--wondering why he had ever married her. How damned prim her mouth
had looked when she refused him! Fancy kissing a mouth like that with
passion! What an ass he had been! And he had thought her such a marvel
of intelligence and sympathy! The little Bush-Ranger had more real
brains in her skinny finger-tip--her rough slang held more human
sympathy than all that other's gush of frilled, silky words! Very well.
He'd take things in his own hands. He'd "'fess up" to the little Harding
when she returned; but in the meantime he was going to do for himself
what she had so often done for him--take a slightly larger dose to ease
this damned pain that was prizing his skull asunder. Yes, by God! He was
a bally simpleton not to have done it before!

It amused him to reach stealthily for the little tablet (he had it to
his hand) and take it "under Sophy's nose," as it were--watching her all
the time from between his lashes. She was sitting near a window, chin on
hand, gazing out at the sky which seemed to her so like a vast
ground-glass cover set above the green bowl of the earth. He grew
impatient, waiting for the slow effect of the morphia, thus taken into
his stomach. He missed that pringle of the stuff when hypodermically
administered, quick through his veins. Then it occurred to him that
these were hypodermic tablets--they would naturally be weaker than those
to be taken by mouth. He took another quarter-grain tablet. Its vile
bitterness seemed delicious to him. All at once he felt that grip at his
midriff, as of a tiny claw clutching and teasing. Triumph seized him. He
looked at her mockingly, his eyes wide open now. He did not hate her any
longer. She amused him now. It was even very pleasant to watch her
sitting there in her dejected attitude of unwilling Tyrant. She was not
the stuff of which real tyrants are made. It took gritty little devils
like the Bush-Bully to tyrannise with _eclat_....

So it had begun.

But unfortunately the self-administration of morphia is not a thing that
can be moderately done. Soon Chesney began to confuse the number of
doses; could not remember exactly when he had last taken the stuff;
would swallow a tablet at the least symptom of physical _malaise_. He
seemed stronger; wished to get up. Then came the morning when the
larger dose revealed its presence clearly to Bellamy.