Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/363

Rh intently studious face. The look of questioning uncertainty merged into one of deliverance, of relief, of gratitude.

"Thank God!" she devoutly and quite impersonally exclaimed.

I didn't altogether resent her spirit of gratitude. What I mostly resented was being the involuntary and casual instrument of it.

"I'm sorry I can't see things the way you do," I somewhat icily explained.

"No, of course you can't! But don't you understand how it's made her see things? How it has brought her light, when she was so blind, so terribly blind?"

"You mean opened her eyes by closing one of mine!" was my somewhat embittered comment.

But the abstracted gaze of the woman in the uniform continued to ignore me.

"What a beast!" she ruminated aloud, rolling the word triumphantly about her tongue, as though it were a chocolate-drop. "Oh, what a beast!"

And then, oddly enough, as though that mention of the beast had been able to conjure him up out of thin air, the subject of our conversation suddenly appeared in the doorway.