Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/191

Rh I turned with a start, it was the doctor's voice, its peculiar softness struck me. He was coming slowly across the room, a curious smile on his face, peering at me over the top of his spectacles, the shoulders bent forward a little, his gait slouching, his slippers dragging along the carpet, his white hair tumbling about his forehead, moving slowly at me—and in his raised right hand was a needle poised to strike.

I knew what it meant: he was going to give me morphia without even being asked. A queer revulsion of feeling came over me. He was saying something, but I did not hear the words properly, nor understand them, at any rate; his voice, too, was so low and soft. My brain was in a whirl. Something in the old man's appearance frightened me. The idea of the drug now also frightened me. Then, suddenly, a complete recklessness rushed over me.

"Take off your coat," I heard him say. "And now roll your sleeve up. So! Nun, jetzt"—he gazed hard into my eyes—"aber—nur—ausnahmsweise!" With slow earnest emphasis he repeated the words: "As an exception—only!"

I watched him choose the place on my arm, I watched the needle go in with its little prick, I watched him slowly press the small piston that injected the poison into my blood. He, for his part, never once moved his eyes from mine till the operation was ended, and my coat was on again. He wore that curious smile the whole time.

"You needed it to-night," he said, "just a little, a very weak dose—aber—nur—ausnahmsweise!" He walked over and put the little Majendie phial back upon the shelf. Then he filled his pipe and drew up the operating chair for me to lie on. His eye was constantly on me. The music was forgotten. He wanted to talk.

Whether he had done this thing really to give me a little happiness, or whether his idea was to make me "interesting" for his own sake, I do not know. The fact is that within three minutes of the needle's prick I was in a state of absolute bliss.

Rh