chair, he lifted himself from it and stood trembling upon his own feet for the first time in almost twenty years.
Grasping the back of the wheeled chair, he used it as a crutch to guide his feeble and uncertain movements. But these became momentarily stronger and more confident.
This, then, was the secret he had hugged to his embittered bosom, a secret unsuspected even by the attending surgeon: that through the motor accident of three days ago he had regained the use of his limbs that had been stricken motionless—strangely enough, by a motor-car—nearly two decades since.
Slowly but surely moving to the bureau in the room, he opened one of its drawers and took out something he had, without her knowledge, seen Judith put away there while she thought he slept. With this hidden in the pocket of his dressing-gown, he steered a straight if very deliberate course to the door, let himself out, and like a materialized spectre of the man he once had been, navigated the corridor to the head of the broad central staircase, and step by step, clinging with both hands, negotiated the descent.
The lobby of the hotel was deserted. As the ceremony approached its end, every guest and servant in the house was crowding the doorway to the chapel. None opposed the progress of this ghastly vision in
