He was lean, formal-faced and spectacled—a doctor by every uninviting sign of the profession.
I told him my business and referred shrinkingly to the thing lying hidden there.
“There isn’t, I suppose, any—any hope whatever?”
“Oh, dear, no; not the least.”
He came toward me pruning and trimming his cold finger-nails.
“She has been in the water, I should say, quite eight hours, or possibly nine.”
He pulled the cloth down slightly, with a speculative motion of his hand, so as to expose the white, rigid face. I had no time to stop him before its sightless eyes were looking up at me.
“Oh, Dolly! Dolly! Such a fearful little woman, and yet with the courage to bring yourself to this!”
Suddenly, through the heart of my wild pity pierced a thought that had already once before stirred unrecognized in me.
“Doctor,” I said, staring down on the poor lifeless face, “do the drowned always look like that?”