A little bag of bones and yellow skin that once had been a man lay on the
wooden bunk, whose hard surface was softened only by a piece of matting.
From the shrivelled face a pair of eyes looked up; deep-set, utterly
tragic, utterly resigned. The face might have been on earth for sixty or
seventy years perhaps. But the eyes were as old as the world, neither
bright nor dull, yet wise with a terrible wisdom far removed from joy or
sorrow. The shrivelled shell of a body was a mere prison for a soul to
which torture and existence had become inseparable, and almost equally
unimportant.
"Oh, we ought not to come in!" Angela exclaimed involuntarily, on the
threshold of this secret.
The weary face faintly smiled, with a smile like a dim gleam of light
flickering over the features of a mummy.
"Come in. Many people come see me," said a voice as old as the eyes, and
sad with the fatal sadness that has forgotten hope. It was a very small,
weak voice, almost like a voice heard at the other end of a long-distance
telephone, and it spoke excellent English.
Silently Angela obeyed; and seeing a broken, cane-seated chair which she
had not noticed before, dropped into it as the low voice asked her to sit
down. She was not afraid now, but sadness gripped her.
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