“Yes, a leper.  Hold my misfortune against me.  Let my neuralgia and Doctor Heyman’s prescription to cure it ruin my life.  Rob me of what happiness with a good man there is left in it for me.  I don’t want happiness.  Don’t expect it.  I’m here just to suffer.  My daughter will see to that.  Oh, I know what is on your mind.  You want to make me out something—­terrible—­because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help myself a little when I’m nearly wild with neuralgia.  Those were doctor’s orders.  I’ll kill myself before I let you make me out something terrible.  I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his prescription.  I’ll kill—­you hear?—­kill myself.”

She was hoarse.  She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery with them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her own face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there.

“Mamma, mamma, what are you saying?  I’m not blaming you, sweetheart.  I blame him—­Doctor Heyman—­for prescribing it in the beginning.  I know your fight.  How brave it is.  Even when I’m crossest with you, I realize.  Alma’s fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until—­you’re cured!  And then—­maybe—­some day—­anything you want!  But not now.  Mamma, you wouldn’t marry Louis Latz now!”

“I would.  He’s my cure.  A good home with a good man and money enough to travel and forget myself.  Alma, mamma knows she’s not an angel.  Sometimes when she thinks what she’s put her little girl through this last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and—­”

“Mamma, don’t talk like that!”

“But now’s my chance, Alma, to get well.  I’ve too much worry in this big hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and—­”

“I know it, mamma.  That’s why I’m so in favor of finding ourselves a sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch—­”

“No!  Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they will never find out from me that he wasn’t.  I won’t be the one to humiliate his memory—­a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way he did.  Oh, Alma, Alma, I’m going to get well now!  I promise.  So help me God if I ever give in to—­it again.”

“Mamma, please!  For God’s sake, you’ve said the same thing so often, only to break your promise.”

“I’ve been weak, Alma; I don’t deny it.  But nobody who hasn’t been tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by—­”

“Mamma, you’re not playing fair this minute.  That’s the frightening part.  It isn’t only the neuralgia any more.  It’s just desire.  That’s what’s so terrible to me, mamma.  The way you have been taking it these last months.  Just from—­desire.”

Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands.

“O God!  My own child against me!”