He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words
of the doctor--the last sounds hie was to hear:
"I never yet--struck a woman."
It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that can
reckon with them in its ken. Thev are offshoots from the types whereof
men say, "He will do this," or "He will do that." We only know that they
exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of their bare
performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.
Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two--one an
assassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his
offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the
wife he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other
a dog-wolf--to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the
other; and each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his
own immaculate standard--of conduct, if not of honor.
The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other's
remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the _coup de
grace_.
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