"Well, do you know, I am not so sure of that," Seymour said. "Let me have a cigarette, and we will discuss the matter together. Do you happen to remember Ferris?"
Barmouth indicated that he remembered Ferris perfectly well.
"In fact, we were all victims of the same ceremony," he said. "What a ghastly business it was! And that fiend of an Anstruther looking on without a drop of pity in his heart for his fellow countrymen, whose sole crime was that they were in the hunt for gold like himself. But I want to try and forget all that. Do you mean to say you have met Ferris?"
"Ferris is at the Great Metropolitan Hotel at the present moment," Seymour explained. "More or less accidentally he ran against Masefield. Jack Masefield happened to mention that he knew me, and there you are. However, I dare say you can get Masefield to tell you the story another time. The point is, that Ferris has discovered a brilliant French surgeon who has operated upon him--he says, quite successfully. He is a mass of plaster and knife marks now, but he says that in the course of a few weeks he will have resumed his normal expression."
A great cry broke from Barmouth. His agitation was something dreadful to witness.
"Cured," he whispered. "Absolutely cured and like other men again. Oh, it seems like a dream; like something too good to be true. To think that you and I, old friend, are going to stand out once more in the broad light of day with no mask needed to conceal our hideousness! You will undergo the operation?"
"Ay, as soon as ever I have done with the Anstruther business," Seymour said in his deep voice. "Once let me see that rascal beyond the power of further mischief, and I place myself in that man's hands at once, if it cost me half my fortune. There is a girl waiting for me, Barmouth--a girl who mourns me as dead. You can see how impossible it was for me to let her know the truth."
"And yet my wife knows the truth," Barmouth said thoughtfully. "Hideous as I am, she refused to give me back my freedom."
"She is a woman of a million," Seymour said, not without emotion; "but then Lady Barmouth discovered the truth. I don't think you ever would have told her on your own initiative."
This was so true that Barmouth had nothing to say in reply. He appeared to be deeply immersed in thought. The settled melancholy of his face had given way to an eager, restless expression. He was like a man in the desert who, past all hope, had found aid at the last moment. He paused in his stride and sat down.