" She shivered as she spoke, and her pale,
tired eyes closed as if in pain. Nothing was said between them for
a while, and neither of them stirred. During the silence the front
door was heard to open, letting in the village doctor, who mounted
the stairs, his footfalls reverberating in Garry's room overhead.
Jack raised his eyes at last and studied her closely. The frail
body seemed more crumpled and forlorn in the depths of the chair,
where she had sunk, than when she had been standing before him.
The blonde hair, always so glossy, was dry as hemp; the small,
upturned nose, once so piquant and saucy, was thin and pinched--
almost transparent; the washed-out, colorless eyes, which in her
girlhood had flashed and sparkled so roguishly, were half hidden
under swollen lids. The arms were flat, the hands like bird claws.
The white heat of a furnace of agony had shrivelled her poor body,
drying up all the juices of its youth.
And yet with the scorching there had crept into the wan face, and
into the tones of her tired, heart-broken voice something Jack had
never found in her as a girl--something of tenderness,
unselfishness--of self-sacrifice for another and with it there
flamed up in his own heart a determination to help--to wipe out
everything--to sponge the record, to reestablish the man who in a
moment of agony had given way to an overpowering temptation and
brought his wife to this condition.
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