He turned the handle and entered. Edith was standing on the other side of the room near the fire with her back towards him, for she was engaged in pouring herself out a cup of tea. Presently, hearing the clump clump of his wooden crutch upon the floor—for he advanced towards her before speaking—she turned round wondering what could be causing that unusual noise. By the light of a standard lamp, she perceived a tall figure clad in a sailor’s pea jacket and mustard-coloured trousers, who seemed to be leaning on a great rough stick, and to have a gigantic red beard and long, unkempt hair which tumbled all over his forehead.
“Who on earth are you?” she exclaimed, “and what are you doing here?”
“Edith,” he answered, in a reproachful tone, “Edith?”
She snatched a candle from the tea-tray, and running rather than walking to him, held it towards his face and looked. Next moment it was rolling on the floor, while she staggered back towards the fire.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! is it you, or your ghost?”
“It is I—Rupert,” he replied heavily, “no ghost. I almost wish I were.”
She collected herself; she stood upright.
“You have been dead for months; at least, they said that you were dead. Welcome home, Rupert!” and with a kind of despairing gesture she stretched out her hand.
Again he hobbled forward, again the rough-hewn thornwood crutch, made by himself with a pocket-knife, clumped upon the carpeted floor. Edith looked down at the sound, and saw that one leg of the mustard-coloured trousers swung loose. Then she looked up and perceived for certain what at first she had only half grasped, that where the left eye should have been was only a sunken hollow, scarlet-rimmed and inflamed with scars as of burning beneath it, and that the right eye also was inflamed and bloodshot as though with weeping, as indeed was the case.
“What has happened to you?” she asked, in a whisper, for she could find no voice to speak aloud, and the hand that she had outstretched dropped to her side. “Oh, your foot and eye—what has happened to them?”