this civilized place is a vexation to you."
"I did not know they were scrutinizing," she answered; "and even if
they are, what does it matter to me? I am sure I am quite too tired to
care."
"Why have you come here?" asked the Disagreeable Man suddenly.
"Probably for the same reason as yourself," she said; "to get better
or well."
"You won't get better," he answered cruelly; "I know your type well;
you burn yourselves out quickly. And--my God--how I envy you!"
"So you have pronounced my doom," she said, looking at him intently.
Then she laughed but there was no merriment in the laughter.
"Listen," she said, as she bent nearer to him; "because you are
hopeless, it does not follow that you should try to make others
hopeless too. You have drunk deep of the cup of poison; I can see that.
To hand the cup on to others is the part of a coward."
She walked past the English table, and the Polish table, and so out of
the Kurhaus dining-hall.
CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS A FEW DETAILS.
IN an old second-hand bookshop in London, an old man sat reading
Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman
brought him a letter. He just glanced indifferently at the letter, and
impatiently at the postman. Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted
when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an
interruption was always regarded by him as an insult.
About two hours afterwards, he opened the letter, and learnt that his
niece, Bernardine, had arrived safely in Petershof, and that she
intended to get better and come home strong. He tore up the letter,
and instinctively turned to the photograph on the mantelpiece. It was
the picture of a face young and yet old, sad and yet with possibilities
of merriment, thin and drawn and almost wrinkled, and with piercing eyes
which, even in the dull lifelessness of the photograph, seemed to be
burning themselves away. Not a pleasing nor a good face; yet intensely
pathetic because of its undisguised harassment.
Zerviah looked at it for a moment.
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