You have drunk deep of the cup of poison; I can see that.
To hand the cup on to others is the part of a coward."
She walked past the English table, and the Polish table, and so out of
the Kurhaus dining-hall.
CHAPTER II.
CONTAINS A FEW DETAILS.
IN an old second-hand bookshop in London, an old man sat reading
Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman
brought him a letter. He just glanced indifferently at the letter, and
impatiently at the postman. Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted
when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an
interruption was always regarded by him as an insult.
About two hours afterwards, he opened the letter, and learnt that his
niece, Bernardine, had arrived safely in Petershof, and that she
intended to get better and come home strong. He tore up the letter,
and instinctively turned to the photograph on the mantelpiece. It was
the picture of a face young and yet old, sad and yet with possibilities
of merriment, thin and drawn and almost wrinkled, and with piercing eyes
which, even in the dull lifelessness of the photograph, seemed to be
burning themselves away.
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