Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/100

 lived an eternity or two in Purgatory in the instant or two that followed the moment when old Battling Peripetia hauled off and swung his right to the jaw.

He just simply sat there and watched the room go round and round, the while he fought for his breath. Through the haze that was in front of his eyes he heard her voice, and suddenly he was sitting quietly in front of Jessica Pomeroy in the restaurant, and he was cold and calm. It had lasted but an instant, but he had learned what it was to suffer as he had never suffered in the trenches. When love hits a man of Val’s type the naked little rascal has a haymaker in either mitt—and he had landed fair and square on Val.

“Does that surprise you?” she was saying, calmly. A shade of feeling flickered through her expressive eyes before she shaded them again with her silken lashes; he was sure of that. Ah, well, she wasn’t married yet. That was something.

“Yes, a little, of course—from what I know of him⸺” he began.

“You mean from what you suspect of him,” she corrected him, and he thought her tone was a trifle stiff and cold; unnecessarily so, it seemed to him.

“Well, suspect, then,” he admitted. “How did he lose his hands?” he asked.

“He saved my life when I was a six year old child,” she enlightened him. “I had fallen in front of a runaway horse dragging a heavy, loaded truck. He jumped in front and threw me aside, but lost his balance before he could quite jump aside himself—he fell—both hands together, you know, in front of him—the horse missed him but the terribly heavy wheels of the truck went over his hands, crushing them. They had to be amputated.” She was silent again, and he did