“What was it?”
“Others said what you have just said. That I was ugly. A woman has nothing—is nothing—without beauty. That is her one source of power.”
Ravant laughed incredulously.
“Women like me,” added the nurse.
IV
HE DID NOT KNOW THAT IT WAS LOADED
One day the nurse told him—as he insisted—the mystery of his opulent situation.
The person who had fired the shot had learned the effect of it from the newspapers, and being rich and sorry, had put his fortune at the disposal of the victim, and none of it was to be spared if it might help in the least to make him perfectly well again. Every cent of the very many the person had was at his disposal. And that his disposal of it might be the more free from embarrassment, he preferred to remain anonymous himself, and to make the hospital, or the nurse herself, if the victim preferred that, his almoner.
“Preferred to remain anonymous!” laughed Ravant. “He preferred to keep out of jail. I’d have him there in no time if I knew who he was!”
“It appears,” said the nurse, “that he did not know his pistol was loaded.”
Ravant exploded again—first with mirth, then with vengeance.