Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/337

 her around. Disfigured, huh? What became of the other man, Camden?"

"I don't know."

"Well, that's all I can think of to-day."

The woman shut the door and William stepped off the porch into the street. So Colburton would go through life disfigured? That was more comforting than to know that he was dead. He judged Colburton more or less accurately. Repulsive to women, no longer fawned upon except for his money, never able to shut out the memory of that humiliating beating he had received in the presence of the woman he had wronged, Colburton would go through what remained of life tasting daily a bit of the hell he had so carelessly and callously brewed for others. Charity? William laughed. Pity? He rubbed his hands pleasurably. There are some deeds it is not human to forget or forgive; and so long as he lived there would remain in William's heart some dregs of the poison this man Colburton had instilled there. All the sermons ever preached will not change or uproot this quality of hatred; not in a strong man.

The nurse still slept on the cot on the veranda. So Ruth was alone now during the nights. The doctor had decreed thus. The patient's eyes, unattracted by movement of any kind, were more likely to close; and Ruth needed sleep, long hours of it. But if she could not see, she could hear the infinitesimal sounds of the night: the ticking of the clock on the stand, running water in some room a dozen doors away, the light crunch of passing