certainly an odd spinal configuration."

"Like our friend's, once more?"

"Like our friend's, exactly!"

Hilda Wade looked away, lest she should attract the patient's attention.
"Well, that woman was brought in here, half-dead, assaulted by her
husband," she went on, with a note of unobtrusive demonstration.

"We get a great many such cases," Travers put in, with true medical
unconcern, "very interesting cases; and Nurse Wade has pointed out to me
the singular fact that in almost all instances the patients resemble one
another physically."

"Incredible!" I cried. "I can understand that there might well be a type
of men who assault their wives, but not, surely, a type of women who get
assaulted."

"That is because you know less about it than Nurse Wade," Travers
answered, with an annoying smile of superior knowledge.

Our instructress moved on to another bed, laying one gentle hand as she
passed on a patient's forehead. The patient glanced gratitude. "That one
again," she said once more, half indicating a cot at a little distance:
"Number 74. She has much the same thin hair--sparse, weak, and
colourless. She has much the same curved back, and much the same
aggressive, self-assertive features. Looks capable, doesn't she? A born
housewife!... Well, she, too, was knocked down and kicked half-dead the
other night by her husband."

"It is certainly odd," I answered, "how very much they both recall--"

"Our friend at lunch! Yes, extraordinary. See here"; she pulled out a
pencil and drew the quick outline of a face in her note-book. "THAT
is what is central and essential to the type. They have THIS sort of
profile. Women with faces like that ALWAYS get assaulted."

Travers glanced over her shoulder. "Quite true," he assented, with his
bourgeois nod. "Nurse Wade in her time has shown me dozens of them.
Round dozens: bakers' dozens! They all belong to that species. In fact,
when a woman of this type is brought in to us wounded now, I ask at
once, 'Husband?' and the invariable answer comes pat: 'Well, yes, sir;
we had some words together.' The effect of words, my dear fellow, is
something truly surprising."

"They can pierce like a dagger," I mused.

"And leave an open wound behind that requires dressing," Travers added,
unsuspecting. Practical man, Travers!

"But WHY do they get assaulted--the women of this type?" I asked, still
bewildered.

"Number 87 has her mother just come to see her," my sorceress
interpos