Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/225

 words which revealed to him the full measure of his calamity. No more appalling message can come to any man than that which makes known to him that he has been stricken by leprosy, that foulest, most repulsive, and least merciful of incurable dis- eases; and Mamat, as he listened to his wife's falter- ing speech, cowered and trembled in the semi- darkness, and now and again, as he rocked his body to and fro for instinctively he had withdrawn him- self from Minah's embrace-gave vent to low sobs, very pitiful to hear.

Leprosy has an awful power to blight a man utterly, to rob him alike of the health and the cleanliness of his body, and of the love and kindness which have made life sweet to him; for when the terror falls upon any one, even those who held him in closest affection in the days when he was whole, too often turn from him in loathing and fear.

As slowly and with pain Mamat began to under- stand clearly, and understanding, to realize the full meaning of the words that fell from his wife's lips, he drew farther and farther away from her, in spite of her restraining hands, and sat huddled up in a corner of the hut, shaken by the hard, deep-drawn tears that come to a grown man in the hour of misery, bringing no relief, but merely adding one additional pang to the intensity of his suffering. Vaguely he told himself that, since Minah must be filled with horror at his lightest touch, since she would now surely leave him, as she had a right to do, he owed it to himself, and to what tattered remnant of self-