"Entranced, no. I do not do that. You will see Doctor Rehner if you wish to be entranced."<br/><br/>Fingertips reached out too far, from a body stiffly rooted in a sea of black, parted trails into Danae's colorless hair. Out and back, back and nearer to her, nearer and over panther-black bedsheets, over her gowned lap she tempted Danae into her secret hiding place away from the Red Woman.<br/><br/>"You will see me if you wish to despair and anguish. I will do for you, if you ask me, but you will not enjoy it. More than not it is a punishment for unruly patients, and my technique has atrophied with inattentiveness to a blunt, crude club."<br/><br/>Danae was so beautiful as sweet air into the oubliette was beautiful, and Doctor Noire's fingers drew the stresses out from soldier's scalp one by one through uneven strands. Tarry, she did, tugging lightly at the periphery of touch, until she commanded a river in her hands and with it steered Danae's attention to the cracked and soot-stained ceiling.<br/><br/>"You have taken the laudanum."<br/><br/>The sea salt, the whipping wind, the sweat of panic and hot-hewn blood, Doctor Noire worked these tangles one by one under her nails with the saintly patience of a mother, a shadow, a cradle of quiet thighs beneath pounding skull.<br/><br/>"You know that release the Red Woman provides. When first I saw her, dead of night in the broken bath, I mistook her for Doctor Heinfroth. She was glistening, moving like a tongue without seeming to move at all. Like a ponderous liquid, like a sea creature, and I went to her."<br/><br/>Strokes along the ears, the brow, the tension of the scalp became no longer accidental but stretched the scope of her purview to a mask around the eyes, bidding them shut and relax.<br/><br/>"I felt her take something from me. Something as immaterial as a name, and freeing in its absence. In its place I felt a great ecstasy, bereft the weight of a burden leaden at the fore of my mind. There is great elation, at first. Those first times, in secret, skulking about after groaning pipes at night, I felt reborn. You understand, don't you, mademoiselle?"<br/><br/>A pause, to dim the light so low an errant breath could plunge them into darkness. On fading embers, a hair's breadth of retreated wick persisted.<br/><br/>"How bliss takes the ugly color of all bitterness and regret poured in. Would that you had destroyed her, we could be free of our sins. Instead she will shape this institution as she shapes herself, and there is naught we can do but wait. I will stay with you, mademoiselle, until the morning."<br/><br/>Doctor Noire's exquisite lace mask transferred to Danae's eyes, and drew loosely. In pretext, it would help Danae to relax, but so too was it necessary before Doctor Noire's hands crossed the point of no return, over the body of a married woman. Such sweet air, into the oubliette.