Shock Treatment Read Online Free

it is to me. I feel the way you do about it.”
    “One must have love. I never really loved my husband. I married him for security. Before I met him I had nothing. I would be a lot happier now if I still had nothing except my freedom.”
    “You can still have your freedom.”
    “Not now. If I left him, I’d have my conscience to torment me. A conscience is a sterner prison than anything else in the world.”
    “My conscience never bothers me, but I guess I can understand about yours.”
    “I don’t know what I am going to think of myself tomorrow,” she said, tracing her forefinger idly along the verandah rail. “I came out here on the spur of the moment. I wanted you to understand . . . .”
    I put my hand over hers.
    “Gilda—”
    She turned and looked at me. . . . She was trembling.
    “Gilda, I’m crazy about you—”
    “Oh, darling, I’m such a hypocrite,” she said breathlessly. “I’m so ashamed, but the moment I saw you . . .”
    I had her in my arms and her mouth was against mine. We clung to each other and I could feel the yearning, the crying out of her body as she pressed against me.
    I picked her up in my arms and carried her into the cabin.
    The brown owl that always sits on the roof of the garage flew suddenly across the face of the moon.
    It made a small, insignificant shadow .

CHAPTER II
    I
     
    SHE came to my cabin for three successive nights, and we made love.
    It was hurried, furtive love, and after the first shock of excitement had passed, it was unsatisfactory love — anyway, for me.
    She was frightened someone would see her coming or leaving my cabin. She was terrified her husband would find out she was being unfaithful to him.
    So our love-making was furtive, and it worried me to find how jumpy she was, and how she would sit up abruptly on the bed, her fingers gripping my arm, when there was any unusual sound such as the occasional passing car, the hoot of the owl or the tapping on the roof from a branch of a tree.
    Each of these three nights, she stayed with me for less than an hour. Our moments together consisted only of this desperate, violent love-making. We scarcely had time to talk before she wanted to get back to her home, and I knew as little about her now as I had done when I first met her.
    But in spite of that, I was in love with her. For me, this union meant much more than the physical act of love. It bothered me to know that her husband had such a powerful influence over her.
    If she talked about anything, it was about him. I didn’t want to listen to what she had to say about him. I wanted her to talk about herself, and I longed for her to talk about me, but she didn’t.
    “I would never forgive myself if he found out,” she said as she dressed on the third night of our love-making. “I keep thinking he might be wanting me. In the past, he has had nights of pain, and he has woken me to give him something to make him sleep. He could be calling for me now.”
    “For God’s sake, Gilda, get him out of your mind!” I was fast losing patience with her. “Why don’t you tell him the truth? Why don’t you tell him you’re in love with me and you must have your freedom?”
    “But, Terry, I can never leave him. I’m responsible for the accident that spoilt his life. I could never, never leave him!”
    I pulled her to me.
    “Do you love me, Gilda?”
    She looked up at me, and there was that thing again in her eyes.
    “Can you doubt it, Terry? Yes, I love you. I think of you every minute of the day. I long to be with you. It’s a dreadful thing to say, but if only he were dead . . . then I could be with you as I want to be with you for always. I’ll never be free until he is dead.”
    “But he isn’t likely to die, is he?” I said impatiently.
    She pulled away from me and, moving to the window, she looked out onto the moonlit trees.
    “No. When the doctor examined him before he came here, he said he was in splendid shape. He could easily last for another