the dentist, stepping outside again, "I'd better give
you gas."

Then he moved aside and hummed an air from a light opera while he mixed
up cement.

I sat up in my shroud.

"Gas!" I said.

"Yes," he repeated, "gas, or else ether or a sulphuric anesthetic, or
else beat you into insensibility with a club, or give you three thousand
bolts of electricity."

These may not have been his exact words. But they convey the feeling of
them very nicely.

I could see the light of primitive criminality shining behind the man's
spectacles.

And to think that this was _my_ fault--the result of my own reckless
neglect. I had grown so used to sitting back dozing in my shroud in the
dentist's chair, listening to the twittering of the birds outside, my
eyes closed in the sweet half sleep of perfect security, that the old
apprehensiveness and mental agony had practically all gone.

He didn't hurt me, and I knew it.

I had grown--I know it sounds mad--almost to like him.

For a time I had kept up the appearance of being hurt every few minutes,
just as a precaution. Then even that had ceased and I had dropped into
vainglorious apathy.

It was this, of course, which had infuriated the dentist. He meant to
reassert his power. He knew that nothing but gas could rouse me out of
my lethargy and he meant to apply it--either gas or some other powerful
pain stimulant.

So, as soon as he said "_gas_," my senses were alert in a moment.

"When are you going to do it?" I said in horror.

"Right now, if you like," he answered.

His eyes were glittering with what the Germans call _Blutlust_. All
dentists have it.

I could see that if I took my eye off him for a moment he might spring
at me, gas in hand, and throttle me.

"No, not now, I can't stay now," I said, "I have an appointment, a whole
lot of appointments, urgent ones, the most urgent I ever had." I was
unfastening my shroud as I spoke.

"Well, then, to-morrow," said the dentist.

"No," I said, "to-morrow is Saturday. And Saturday is a day when I
simply can't take gas. If I take gas, even the least bit of gas on a
Saturday, I find it's misunderstood----"

"Monday then."

"Monday, I'm afraid, won't do. It's a bad day for me--worse than I can
explain."

"Tuesday?" said the dentist.

"Not Tuesday," I answered. "Tuesday is the worst day of all. On Tuesday
my church society meets, and I _must_ go to it."

I hadn't been near it, in reality, for three years, but suddenly