Anne

     Melting snow mixed with her  tears, as Thomas said his

last words to Anne.  "My dear, you are in the best possible hands.

For as long as you live, my bank will send money for your

maintenance.  You will be well cared for.  The Aston Asylum is

one of the finest and most progressive in all of Britain.  Dr. Aston

is both a doctor of divinity and a physician, a noted alienist who

assures me you will have the best treatments known to medical

science.  Good bye, now.  Most probably we will never see each

other again, but rest assured that I will always have a place for you

in my heart."  With that, the door closed, and Matron led Anne

toward the women's wing.

     Anne was the only child of The Reverend Evan Jones and

his wife.  As a non-conformist, not Church of England, and a

displaced Welshman, pastor to a small flock in the north of

England, Rev. Jones never had much money, but his family never

lacked for the necessities nor felt a need for luxuries.  Anne was an

intelligent and attractive child, with lively eyes and auburn hair,

but she had a speech impediment, a stammer, which exposed her

to ridicule.  Her parents schooled her at home and discouraged her

playing with others.  When she was eighteen, she began her

monthly periods, as was common in those days, when girls

matured more slowly.  Her parents arranged a marriage to a

lawyer, Thomas Marlow, Esq., an ambitious solicitor in

Newcastle.  They were married in her father's church, and, as

Thomas took Anne to Newcastle, the Rev. Jones and his wife

departed England to bring the Gospel to the heathens of Africa.

     The wedding night: Thomas, overcome by lust for her pale,

delicate body, ravished the virgin Anne without those gentle

preliminaries which might have prepared her for conjugal

coupling.  In the morning, she communicated to him how painful

and distasteful the experience had been, on her part.  Her

husband's reaction was to declare that he would never again visit

her bed, or even her bedroom.  She was forbidden to leave the

house or to entertain friends in the house.  He rarely spoke to her,

but she became aware that he was slaking his lust with women in

the city and even, on occasion, with one of the servant girls in

Anne's own house.  She knew not what to say about that, so she

said nothing.

     Over the course of several months, Anne grew more quiet

and more melancholy.  She lost weight, and her menses stopped.

It was almost as if she were regressing, going back into her

childhood as a recluse.  Thomas and Anne's mother-in-law, along

with the family doctor, as required by law since 1774, testified

before a justice of the peace, who then issued an order of

commitment.  Anne was legally judged to be hysterically  insane

by a man she had never seen.

     The Aston Asylum for the Insane was a big brick building

in the Regency style, out of place and  isolated in the Yorkshire

dales.  Apart from the outbuildings and gardens of the asylum, the

only sign of human habitation that Anne could see was the distant

ruins of a castle which had once belonged to Richard III.  Snow

covered the ground and swirled around the building, as the wind

moaned in the fireless chimneys.  Matron, an older women in

charge of the female patients  and staff, led Anne to a small room,

a cell, lit only by the gray light which filtered through a high,

narrow window.  Anne hugged herself against the chill and waited.

She was aware of other inmates, though she could not see them.

They were locked in their cells.  Most were silent.  One sang a

bawdy song. Anne did not even understand some of the words.

There was an undercurrent of moaning, and an occasional scream

or shriek.  Anne realized that, for practical purposes, she was no

longer Thomas Marlow's wife.  Few would know that he had even

been married; fewer would remember Anne, and perhaps no one

would know that she was still alive.  Thomas might even remarry.

She had no one, no friend, no husband, no contact with her

parents, who might well be dead by now, murdered by savages in

the jungles of Africa.  Why had God made her, if her life had no

meaning?

     At last the bolt shot back and Matron entered, carrying a

candle and followed by two men.  The elder, with white hair,

dressed in black clerical garb, introduced himself.   "I am Doctor

Aston, and I am here to help you, Mrs. Marlow."  He gestured at

the younger man, also clad in black, but without the clerical collar,

a handsome fellow only a few years older than Anne.  "This is

Doctor Wilson, my assistant.  First, we must examine you.

Tomorrow, we can begin with the standard treatments for your

mental illness.  Very often, we are successful in effecting a cure,

and the patient can return home, so I do hope you will cheerfully

cooperate with your treatment."

     Matron took Anne's wrap and then began to unbutton the

back of  her dress.  Anne simply stood there, until Matron began to

pull the long sleeves over Anne's hands, causing the bodice to fall

away.  "N-n-n-n", Anne stammered, trying to protest, but Matron

continued to undress her, removing her dress and folding it, then

removing the blouse and underskirts, until she was down to Anne's

whalebone-stayed corsets, which confined Anne's waist and

accentuated  her hips.  The doctors looked on approvingly.

Matron's busy fingers made quick work of the laces, and the stiff

garment fell away, leaving Anne standing there in only her thin

muslin shift and her shoes.

      "Off with the shoes," said Matron.  Anne bent awkwardly

to remove her shoes, acutely conscious of her near nudity.  "Now

the shift.  Come on!"  Reluctantly, Anne lifted her last garment

over her head, exposing her private cleft to the sight of the men,

and then exposing her girlish breasts.  The chill of the room gave

her gooseflesh and made her nipples stand out.  She tried to cover

herself with her hands, but Matron seized Anne's arms and easily

held them behind her, elbows nearly touching, leaving Anne totally

exposed.

     Tears glistened on Anne's cheeks as she tried to protest.

"P-ppplease!  I-I-I n-n-n-"

     Dr. Aston took one of Anne's wrists and felt her pulse.

"Now, young woman, you must cooperate with your physicians.

Have you never had a medical examination before"

     "N-n-n-no."

     Dr. Wilson took her other wrist and felt for the pulse, while

Dr. Aston placed a rolled up paper above Anne's bosom and said,

"Breathe deeply."  With his ear to the paper tube he listened to her

chest, and then her back.  "All clear," he said, "She seems to be

physically healthy."  When they released her, Anne again tried to

cover herself with her hands and stood there, shivering in the cold. 

Matron handed her a gray wool garment, cut like a chemise, to

cover Annes' nakedness, and Dr. Aston remarked, "Yes, she's a bit

thin, but I see no reason why we can't begin treatment tomorrow."

            Then he turned to Dr. Wilson and spoke in Latin.  "Mental

illness," he said, "has two components, one physical, one moral.

First, we treat the physical ailments.  Her previous doctor

diagnosed chronic melancholia, a hysterical malady common in

women.  Her bodily humours are out of harmony.   Matron  will

see to that, with purges and clysters.  I'll tell Matron to try to fatten

her up a bit, and see that she gets plenty of exercise.  The moral

component is more difficult to reach, but there are many well

known treatments, to focus her mental processes on that which is

good.  The standard treatments, whippings, cold water baths,

blistering poultices, and physical confinement, the same

treatments used on our late king, during his madness, tend to focus

the attention of the patient on the present, pushing into the

background memories of earlier experiences which, perhaps,

precipitated the madness.  We have here some new instruments of

treatment, invented in America by a Doctor Rush.  The objective is

to so disorient the patient that he or she takes on the temperament

of a cow or sheep, contentedly living in the present, with little

concern for the past or anxiety for the future.  In this patient's

case, we will hope to see a time when the illness which prevents

her speech is cured, and she can progress  to normal human verbal

intercourse, which is, of course, one of activities which

distinguishes the human from the beast. "

     Noting the expression on Anne's face, Dr. Aston resumed

speaking English.  "Do not fear, Mrs. Marlow.  You may have

heard of the horrors of the Bedlam madhouse, but you have

nothing to fear of that sort here.  We do not use branding irons to

drive out demons.  This is the Nineteenth Century.  We do not

believe in witches and demons.  Patients such as yourself are not

possessed.  They are ill, and in many cases they can be cured."

     The doctors departed, and Matron followed with the candle

and Anne's clothes, bolting the door, leaving Anne alone in her

cell, which was furnished with only a bed and a chamber pot.  The

mattress was straw in a bag of ticking, and it was covered by

smelly woolen blankets.   There was no fire to warm the place, and

the winter chill, the ice-cold bricks of her cell, made sleep very

difficult.

     When Anne did fall asleep, she had nightmares which,

fortunately, she remembered very little of.  One involved a man 

was it Thomas or Dr. Wilson --- sticking his thing between her

legs; she woke screaming.  Morning  was signified by an increase

in the general level of noise and by a faint light through a slit-like

window high on the wall, where she could see nothing but a tiny

patch of sky.   A panel at the bottom of the door slid open, and

someone slid a tray through the opening, before it closed again.

On the tray was a bowl of oatmeal, with a wooden spoon, a mug of

tea, no sugar or milk, and some bread which had been fried in

bacon fat.  She ate and drank it all, ravenously.

           Too soon, the door opened, and two women, one no older

than Anne, the other her mother's  age, ordered her out.  Strangely,

they were dressed like nuns and had crosses on chains around their

necks.  Anne had heard of "nursing sisters" but had never seen

one, and this was a private asylum, wasn't it?  They half dragged

Anne, still clutching her blanket, through corridors and up stairs to

a room which had a "convenience chair" in the middle of the

room, conventional enough, like a box with a back and arms on it,

except that under the hole in the seat there was no chamber pot,

only a drain in the floor.  The "sisters" took her  blanket and shift

and sat the naked Anne on the chilly chair.  They strapped her in;

one strap under her breasts and around the back of the chair, straps

for each arm, to the arms of the chair, and straps around her ankles

to the legs of the chair.  A servant girl brought a tray with several

mugs on it, and the "nurses" forced Anne to drink.  The first

contained a hot, herbal tea, rather bitter.  A second mug contained

a vile tasting oil, which Anne could hardly drink without retching.

The third was more tea.  By this time, Anne felt bloated and had to

struggle to comply with the orders to drink.   They draped her

blanket over her, for she was shivering, and left her alone.

     Anne waited, wondering if she would ever be warm again

and anxious at being naked under the blanket. Even on her

wedding night, she had never been naked in the presence of other

people, yet here they assumed she had no modesty at all.  Time

passed slowly; she had no way to know how much time.  The

bloated feeling in her stomach subsided, but it was replaced  by

painful cramps in her bowels.  The sensations spread through her

belly, the pain making her sweat, even in the freezing cold.  A

"sister", one Anne hadn't seen, came in and forced her to drink

another mug of liquid. The sister stood, silently, and watched as

Anne squirmed in her restraining straps and made faces as waves

of pain reflected through her abdomen.  Then, quite involuntarily,

Anne's little hole in back (no one had ever given her  a polite

name for it) opened and spewed smelly, mostly liquid matter from

her bowels.  Anne watched the sister, who was watching her, and

felt so embarrassed.  The sister waited until most of the splashing

noises had subsided and then forced Anne to drink yet another

mug of now-tepid brew.

     This torment continued, Anne reckoned, all morning, for at

one point she was given some bread and cheese to eat, a noon

meal, she supposed.  By that time, the pain had largely subsided;

the gurgles and cramps and showers of bodily waste were only

sporadic.  Still, they kept her strapped on the commode, straining

to expel the contents of her belly.  Then Matron came in, followed

by the two morning nurses who carried a bucket and a strange

machine.  The machine was a metal cylinder with a handle on one

end and a conical extension on the other.  Matron put the tapered

end into the bucket and pulled on the handle, which sucked quarts

of steaming liquid into the cylinder.  Needing no orders, the nurses

whipped the blanket off Anne and pivoted the chair forward, off

the box, so Anne found herself staring at the floor, supported by

the strap beneath her breasts.  She struggled for breath as Matron

pressed hot metal against Anne's shitter hole and forced hot liquid

into her bowels.  Anne felt as if some wild animal was inside her,

struggling to get out, stretching her tortured bowels.

     "Hold it in!" ordered Matron, as she removed the metal

device and the nurses lowered the seat, returning Anne to an

upright position.  "Hold it in as long as you can.  Hold it."  Anne

couldn't.  Quarts of almost scalding water jetted from her bottom

into the drain in the floor.  The nurses again tipped the chair, and

Matron again injected quarts of seething fluid, and again the chair

was returned to its upright position until Anne had emptied her

bowels as best she could.  Seven times they did that, until the

bucket was empty and Anne felt exhausted.  Matron took a greased

ebony object and pushed it into Anne's unresisting hole, where it

stayed, preventing the normal closure.  "We can't have you leaking

on the floor, Mrs. Marlow," said Matron as she wiped her hands

and went to the door.  "Take her down for exercise," she called

over her shoulder as she left.

     Barefoot on the freezing floor, with only her inadequate

shift and  blanket, Anne was taken to a subterranean room, lighted

only by smoky lamps burning suet.  There was a rotating

mysterious machine, like the water wheel of a mill, except the

buckets were replaced by bars, like the rungs of a ladder.  Three

naked women climbed the rungs of the giant wheel, turning it,

sweating even in the cold of the basement room.  A female staff

member, not a nurse, judging from her garb, sat supervising with a

whip in her hand!  Stripped naked again, Anne was made to take

the place of one of the women, who rested and caught her breath.

Distracted by the nudity, tormented by the unfamiliar plug in her

bottom, Anne worked hard to climb the rungs of the wheel,

holding on to a horizontal bar.  If she did not climb fast enough, if

her arms extended too far or she let go of the bar, the supervisor

would crack her whip in warning.  The rungs hurt the arches of her

feet (she had not yet learned to balance on the balls of her feet)

and she panted for breath as sweat drenched her.  She was ready to

die, she thought, when it was her turn to rest.  This torment

continued for the balance of the afternoon until, aching all over

from overworked  muscles, Anne and the others were allowed to

stop.  The  women put on their simple dresses, and Anne wrapped

herself in her blanket, as the supervisor marched them back

upstairs to their cells.  "No talking," she barked, cracking her

whip, when Anne tried to ask a question.

     Anne was huddled in her blanket on the bed in her cell

when Matron appeared.  "P-p-p-p-please," said Anne, pointing to

her bottom.

     "The plug should stay in," replied Matron.  "You will have

daily treatments until the toxins have been flushed from your

body."

     The evening meal, in her cell, was boiled potatoes in milk,

with some dried apple slices for dessert.  Later, Dr. Aston visited

her.  "Well, Mrs. Marlow, are you feeling better yet?"

     "N-n-n-no," replied Anne, shaking her head.

     "No?  Well, you soon will feel better, once the poisons

have been purged from your body and you respond to the benefits

of good diet and exercise.  I'll look in on you again, tomorrow."

     Exhausted, Anne slept more soundly than before.  The next

day was exactly like the first, except that Anne's  bum hole had

been stretched, and it was harder to hold in the scalding fluid that

Matron injected, so the plug was used to contain the scalding

liquid inside her until Matron judged it time to expel the contents

of her rectum.  Later, her muscles screamed in pain as she

"exercised" on the treadmill wheel.  The evening meal of potatoes

and milk was supplemented with boiled cabbage and an ounce or

so of boiled meat, mostly fat.  Apparently the order to fatten her up

was taken seriously, for she was allowed second portions when she

asked for them.

            For three more days she spewed her guts, though at least

Matron removed the anal plug before Anne labored on the

treadmill. Then it was Sunday, a day of rest.   The women were

issued proper dresses (but no corsets or hats or shoes) and taken to

a chapel for Church of England services, conducted by Dr. Aston.

Anne, of course, had never been confirmed in the Anglican

Catholic Church, so she was unable to take communion, but it was

a comfort for her to again experience the sense of community that

comes from sharing a religious service with other people.  There

were, she estimated, about twenty women, ranging in age from

perhaps sixteen to very old, fifty or sixty.  Two  were restrained by

strait jackets, and some tended to look distracted and to talk to

themselves, but it was, just the same, a Christian service.

     Monday, after breakfast, she did not have to drink the

purgative brews, and there were only three  applications of the

clyster, so it was still morning when, denied even her simple dress,

she was led, wrapped in her blanket, outdoors, into a walled yard,

some sort of forecourt for the stables.   She saw the sun for the first

time since before her arrival, though the sun was a weak white

spot in the overcast sky.  She  looked around and saw faces in the

windows of both the men's and women's wings.  The snow was

cold on her bare feet, and the blanket was inadequate to keep her

warm.  They led her to a kind of  marble  table and, to her horror,

took away her blanket.  Anne wailed at her situation, naked,

exposed to both the chill wind of winter and the gaze of strangers. 

Quickly, the nurses forced Anne to lie face down on the stone slab,

and they strapped her ankles to one end and her wrists to the other.

The cold stone, like a horizontal grave stone, pressed against her

thighs, her belly, her breasts, which she was helpless to raise off

the freezing table as they stretched her as tautly as she might have

been on a medieval rack.  Her teeth chattered as the warmth of her

body seemed drained from her by the cold, smooth marble.  Then,

to accentuate the torment, the nurses drenched her with buckets of

icy water.

     Anne gritted her teeth and tried to bear the searing cold.

She could not move, not even shiver, tied as tightly as she was, but

her lips fluttered and her teeth chattered.  Never had she been so

cold.  As the minutes passed, her mind became confused and her

body numb.  She knew that death by freezing was a real

possibility, and she tried to pray, though no intelligible sound

escaped her lips.

     Just as she felt life slipping away, a new pain tormented

her.  In her befuddled mental state, she had not noticed  when two

men approached her, carrying bundles of birch twigs.  Now,

systematically, the two simultaneously whipped her back and

buttocks and legs with the birches, as if flogging a criminal.   The

pain restored life to her frozen body, brought screams from her

blue lips, until she could bear no more and fainted.

     Anne awoke in a tub of hot water, her teeth still chattering,

even as her skin turned red like a lobster.  Dr. Aston and Dr.

Wilson stood beside the tub, watching as she was brought back to

life.  At last the chill was gone and the heat became oppressive.

Anne tried to raise herself from the tub, but Matron pressed her

back down.  "That's all right, Matron.  Let her get out.  There is no

need to prolong her discomfort.  Dry her off with soft towels 

my, the birching left some nasty welts --- and give her back her

dress and blanket.  Give her an extra blanket, too, and let her

recover in her cell until dinner."

     The following day, Anne was subjected to the American

chair, which Dr. Aston and two nurses demonstrated for Dr.

Wilson.  First, Anne was strapped into a strait jacket, a kind of

canvas coat with closed sleeves.  First, the waist was constricted,

like a corset, until Anne could hardly breathe.  Then the arms of

the coat were crossed beneath her breasts and fastened together

behind her, so her arms were tightly hugging herself  and were

entirely immovable.  They seated her in a chair which could pivot

around  a horizontal axis.  They strapped her in, with belts around

over her breast, around her waist, and across her lap.  To test the

bindings, they rotated the chair forward in a half circle, so Anne

was upside down, and then tipped it backward in a complete

circle, until Anne was once again upright.  A wooden box was

placed enclosing her head, so she could breathe but could not see

her surroundings.  She felt the chair, with her in it, lifted, and they

attached it to a turntable which could rotate around a vertical axis,

propelled by a crank and connecting rod to a tall lever.

     Anne, of course, could not see what was happening to her,

but Matron signaled to a nurse who leaned on the lever.  As the

lever moved forward, the chair rotated a half turn, and pulling

back on the lever completed the turn.  After a few turns, the lever

moved smoothly back and forth, as if the nurse were churning

butter, and the chair rotated smoothly at a constant rate.  Anne, of

course was conscious of spinning, but that was nothing terribly

unfamiliar.  As a child, she had enjoyed whirling on her toes until,

dizzy, she collapsed on the floor laughing.  This was similar,

except that she could not stop when she wished.

     The chair slowed, and Matron removed the box from her

head.  "See the nystagmus, the twitching of the eyes."

     "Yes, she must be very dizzy."

     The box was replaced, and the rotation resumed.  However,

when it had reached a steady speed, the chair was suddenly rotated

around the horizontal axis, so Anne was facing downward.  The

result was instant mal de mer, intense nausea and retching, though

Anne had nothing in her stomach to throw up.  She made

incoherent noises like an animal in a trap, but the multi-axis

spinning continued until she was, almost, driven to a true insanity.

     The chair was stopped and the box removed.  "Mrs.

Marlow, can you hear me?"

     "Ullk! Awrgh!  Ak."

     "Take her back to the women's ward.  Don't leave her

alone, lest she choke on her tongue."

     Back in the common room, the nurses were distracted by

some sort of emergency, and Anne, still in the strait jacket and

unable to stand, was left on the floor.  Slowly, Anne regained her

senses.

     "Eh, it's the new girl."

     "What's yer name?"

     "Ah, ah, ah..."

     "Oi, she ain't  got a name!"

     "Shame she can't even stand.  Let's have some fun with

her."  Someone kicked her hip.  "Stand her up and let's see wot

she's made of."

     "Let's make 'er ride the horse."

     "Yes, the horse."  They stood Anne on her feet and lifted

her skirt, so as to examine her womanly parts.  Someone brought

out a blanket and rolled it into a thick rope.  They passed the rope

between her legs and raised the ends, until Anne's weight was

supported by the  blanket and her feet left the floor.  Three women

held each end of the rope, and they started a sort of tug of war with

it, pulling it up and down, back and forth, while two other women

steadied the helpless Anne so she would not fall off "the horse".

     "N,n,n,n,noooo!" she protested, as the wooly blanket was

forced upward, parting her labia and rubbing intensely on places

Anne had never touched.  N,n,n,nahhh."

     Laughing, the inmates continued, forcing the helpless Anne

to ride the bucking "horse."  In time Anne's protests stopped.

Then she began to giggle.  "At's it.  Keep it going."

     Anne's giggles became louder and more continuous, until

she was laughing and choking.  "Oh, God!" she screamed.

Instantly, the women dropped the blanket and scattered, trying to

hide in their cells or elsewhere.  Anne lay on the floor, her skirt

around her waist, the rolled blanket still between her legs, her

breasts heaving as the constricting strait jacket was making it

difficult to breathe.

     "Mrs. Marlow, are you all right?" asked the newly arrived

Dr. Wilson.  Anne could only gasp.  "Is this woman having a fit?"

he asked the cowering inmates, who obviously were afraid of

punishment for simply having a bit of fun with Anne.  No one

wanted to speak.  Dr. Wilson knelt beside Anne and deftly undid

the buckles and ties which held her confined in the canvas jacket.

As soon as she could, she scuttled away from him, pulling down

her skirt and trying to cover her shamefully exposed genitals.

"Mrs. Marlow, are you all right?  I thought I heard you

exclaim,'Oh God'."

     "Uh!"

     "Someone fetch Matron.  I fear Mrs. Marlow has gone

quite mad.  I never did trust those Americans."

     Anne managed to sit up, and she looked at Dr. Wilson with

new insight.  "Dr. Wilson," she said in Latin, "I am quite as sane

as you are."

     "Did you just speak to me in Latin?"

     "Yes."

     "But you can't even speak English."

     "I am a clergyman's daughter," she said in passable Latin,

"and reasonably well educated," she added in Greek.  "Since

childhood," she continued, reverting to Latin, "I have had a speech

impediment which makes it difficult for me to express myself in

my native tongue.  However, I can sing in Italian or French, and

speak Latin, Greek, and a bit of Hebrew and Icelandic, for those

tongues, so foreign to me, apparently reside in portions of my

psyche which do not share the impediment in my native speech."

     "Oh, God," said Dr. Wilson.  "And you were laughing.  The

melancholia is cured?"

     "I think so, learned physician."

     "So the chair of Dr. Rush was an effective treatment, in

spite of my doubts?"  He was speaking Latin, now, and the

watching inmates of the asylum were completely perplexed.

     "No, the chair is an abomination.  The cure came from my

sister inmates, all, supposedly insane.  The order of commitment,

it said I suffered from hysteria, did it not?"

     "Yes." 

     "And 'hysteria', from the Greek,  is a state of mental

aberration attributed to the female organ, the womb."

     "Yes, that is the commonly held hypothesis."

     "These women, by making me ride the horse, as they put it,

must have adjusted my womb, and cured my melancholy, for I felt

a euphoria such as I have never before experienced, and you heard

me laugh.  As further evidence, I believe a quantity of fluid exuded

from my female orifice.  Perhaps a congestion of the womb, and

an impounding of natural fluids, was, in fact, the cause of my

condition."

     "Amazing.  Please come with me, Mrs. Marlow.  We must

inform Dr. Aston."

     Some days  later, Dr. Aston approached Anne.  Anne was

dressed in the same clothes as she had worn when she arrived at

Aston Asylum, and she was housed in a cosy room in the central,

administrative, portion of the building, a room with a feather bed

and a cosy hearth.  She had been working closely with Dr. Wilson,

and they had repeatedly demonstrated that a new treatment,

involving pressure and friction between the lower limbs, was,

indeed, effective in adjusting the condition of the womb and

raising the spirits of female patients.  Further, they had shown that

the clyster, irrigating the bowels, was misapplied.  A stream of

tepid water, applied instead to the regions of the forward orifice,

was also effective in revitalizing a congested womb.  Several

women, not just Anne, testified to being able to feel the paroxysms

of the womb and the releasing of fluids, with a resulting general

improvement in temperament.  "I have been in communication

with your husband, and he says he does not want you released to

his custody.  In fact, he says you are not properly his wife.  He is

seeking an annulment, claiming you were never properly married

and that, in any event, the marriage was never actually

consummated and was therefore invalid.  He intends, I gather, to

remarry as soon as possible.  He says, however, that the payments

for your maintenance here will continue as long as your live, and

he prays that we will keep you here."

     "I suppose I should call you Miss Jones," said Dr. Wilson.

     "Or Anne," she noted.

     "If you would consent, Miss Jones," said Dr. Aston, "we

would be pleased to have you remain here on our staff.  I shall be

retiring soon, and perhaps Matron, also.  I'm sure Dr. Wilson

would be pleased to have you as an assistant."

     "Yes, Miss Jones.  Please stay.  You have been invaluable

to me."  Impulsively, he took her hand in his.

     "Dr. Aston, Dr. Wilson," she replied, in fluent Latin, "As a

Christian, as one who strives to help the unfortunate,  I shall be

happy to stay here and assist you in your research."