se?"

"You might, for instance, have your heart plucked out by a vulture
while you're lying helpless."

"Poison the carcass!" Emma elegantly advised. "That'll finish the
vulture before it has time to gorge full." And, as he straddled his
battered bicycle, he added a significant remark, which showed that he
very well knew what he was talking about. "Lundi'll always be blind
about women, anyway."

Tryon did not return to Druro's room, but went thoughtfully toward that
wing of the hospital in which he knew the quarters of the young and
pretty matron to be situated. Having found her, he put before her so
urgent and convincing an appeal for an interview with Mrs. Hading that
she went herself to ask that lady to receive him. A clinching factor
was an adroit remark about his brother's interest in Druro's chances.
He guessed that such a remark repeated would bring him into Marice
Hading's presence quicker than anything else, and he was right. Within
five minutes, he was in the softly shaded, violet-scented room where
Druro had groped his way some nights before--the difference being that
he could see that which Druro had mercifully been spared.

The beauty of the woman sitting in the long chair had been torn from
her like a veil behind which she had too long hidden her real self.
Now that she was stripped, a naked thing in the wind, all eyes could
see her deformities and read her cold and arid soul. The furies of
rage and rancour were grabbling at her heart, even as the leopard had
scrabbled on her face. It was not the mere disfigurement of the angry,
purplish scars that twisted her mouth and puckered her cheeks. A
shining spirit, gentle and brave in affliction might have transformed
even these, robbing them of their hideousness. But here was one who
had "thrown down every temple she had built," and whose dark eyes were
empty now of anything except a malign and bitter ruin. It was as
though nothing could longer cover and conceal her cynical dislike of
all things but herself. The face set on the long, ravaged throat, once
so subtly alluring, had turned hawklike and cruel. It seemed
shrivelled, too, and, between the narrow linen bandages she still wore,
it had the cunning malice of some bird of prey peering from a barred
cage.

Tryon looked once, then kept his eyes to his boots. He would have
given much to have fled, and, in truth, he had no stomach for his job.
It seemed to him uncommonly like hitting at some