"At your throat?" said I. "You mean she tried to throttle you?"
"Throttle me!" he exclaimed scornfully. "She seized me with her teeth!"
"But," I said, and hesitated, for I feared I might wound his curious susceptibility—"the damage to your face?"
"Damn her!" he cried. "Damn her! I had never seen her without her gloves, you understand, but she must have taken them off that night; for this"—he indicated his plastered countenance—"is what she did with her nails!"
He paused, staring at me dully, and then with a hint of the old ridiculous vanity entering his voice:
"But I scored after all," he said, tossing the little amulet into the drawer from which he had taken it. "If that's worth £50 it will more than pay the doctor's bill, I think!"
Following a brief interval:
"Of course," I said, "you would recognize the woman again?"
"I am not so certain," declared the scarred man. "She always wore some sort of veil; but you may be sure," he added in a tone of supreme condescension, "that she was a very pretty woman, or I shouldn't have been bothering with her."
"You are quite sure of that?" I ventured to remark.