Durnovo would never have shown that
face--or what remained of it--to a human being. He could only have
killed himself. Who can tell what cruelties had been paid for, piece
by piece, in this loathsome mutilation? The slaves had wreaked their
terrible vengeance; but the greatest, the deepest, the most inhuman
cruelty was in letting him go.

"They've made a pretty mess of me," said Durnovo in a sickening,
lifeless voice--and he stood there, with a terrible caricature of a
grin.

Joseph set down the lamp with a groan, and went back into the dark room
beyond, where he cast himself upon the ground and buried his face in his
hands.

"O Lord!" he muttered. "O God in heaven--kill it, kill it!"

Guy Oscard never attempted to run away from it. He stood slowly gulping
down his nauseating horror. His teeth were clenched; his face, through
the sunburn, livid; the blue of his eyes seemed to have faded into an
ashen grey. The sight he was looking on would have sent three men out of
five into gibbering idiocy.

Then at last he moved forward. With averted eyes he took Durnovo by the
arm.

"Come," he said, "lie down upon my bed. I will try and help you. Can you
take some food?"

Durnovo threw himself down heavily on the bed. There was a punishment
sufficient to expiate all his sins in the effort he saw that Guy Oscard
had had to make before he touched him. He turned his face away.

"I haven't eaten anything for twenty-four hours," he said, with a
whistling intonation.

"Joseph," said Oscard, returning to the door of the inner room--his
voice sounded different, there was a metallic ring in it--"get something
for Mr. Durnovo--some soup or something."

Joseph obeyed, shaking as if ague were in his bones.

Oscard administered the soup. He tended Durnovo with all the gentleness
of a woman, and a fortitude that was above the fortitude of men. Despite
himself, his hands trembled--big and strong as they were; his whole
being was contracted with horror and pain. Whatever Victor Durnovo had
been, he was now an object of such pity that before it all possible
human sins faded into spotlessness. There was no crime in all that
human nature has found to commit for which such cruelty as this would be
justly meted out in punishment.

Durnovo spoke from time to time, but he could see the effect that his
hissing speech had upon his companion, and in time he gave it up. He
told haltingly of the horrors of the Simiacine Plateau--of the last