w
seated, leaning up against the cushions at the end, cautiously, so as
not to disarrange her hat. Esther drew up the narrow skirt, exposing
slender legs encased in gossamer stockings and six inches or so of a
diaphanous under-garment, pink georgette, delicate as a cobweb and
scented like the rest of its owner with an indefinable and slightly
cloying perfume. On the white skin just below the hip there showed
startlingly a blue-black bruise, the size of a franc piece--the visible
mark of repeated injections. Esther sponged a fresh spot and the
doctor shot in the long needle with a casual indifference.
Simultaneously the woman on the couch closed her eyes and stretched out
her limbs with a feline luxurious movement. Esther was tempted to
believe she enjoyed the stabbing pain. There were people who took a
sensual delight in suffering, or at least she had heard that there
were. She watched curiously the sort of rapturous twist of the
patient's body, the convulsive grip of her hands on the rim of the
couch.

Hands? For the first time Esther noticed them. What was it about them
that was different, that filled her with a mixture of fascination and
repugnance? They were not large; they were soft, milky-white,
marvellously manicured, each nail a plaque of carmine enamel. Yet
there was something wrong, almost like a deformity. Of course! It was
the shortness of the fingers, or rather, of the first joint, a general
look of stumpiness, the nails trained to long points to hide the
deficiency. The thumbs, in particular--how squat, how stunted! They
appeared to have only two joints instead of three. Somehow they gave
her a feeling akin to nausea.... She sponged the puncture with iodine,
smoothed down the skirt, cleaned and replaced the needle in its case,
and all the time she was thinking of those oddly repulsive hands.
Repulsive to her, that is. She knew that not many people would have
noticed them specially.

Lady Clifford had risen, a sort of nervous expectancy in her manner.
The doctor glanced at her, then turned to Esther.

"You may as well go home, if you like, Miss Rowe," he said. "I don't
think I shall need you for anything more."

"Oh, thank you, doctor!"

It still wanted half an hour until the time she usually left off. For
a moment it flashed upon her that there was, after all, a spark of
kindliness concealed in that big, slow-moving machine, and the thought
warmed and pleased her. She always want