So Dies the Dreamer

Sane, happy, newly-married men don't jump from twelfth-floor windows. On the other hand, had Charles Trafton been sane at the end? It began only five days after he had been married. Sarah Trafton was asleep dreaming; she had awoken, heart pounding with shock, to a frightful sound. In a woman it would have been a scream; in Charles it was a groan that mounted and quickened and grew, so that only Sarah's sharp cry and wild reaching for the lamp stopped it from turning into a shriek. After that Charles was never free from nightmares. He could only dispel them with alcohol, and that vicious circle had seemed to ruin him utterly. He refused to go to a psychiatrist - but a few weeks after his death a psychiatrist came to see Sarah. Charles had in fact been to see him, three times, and he had been frightened that his wife was going to kill him.