After the operation, and the verdict of the
doctors, that no more could be done than had been done, she had had an
access of almost crazy misery, in which all the secret violence of her
nature had rushed to the surface from the depths. Shut up alone in her
room, she had passed a day and a night without food. She had lain upon
the floor. She had torn her clothes into fragments. The animal that
surely dwells at the door of the soul of each human being had had its way
in her, had ravaged her, humiliated her, turned her to savagery. Then at
last she had slept, still lying upon the floor. And she had waked feeling
worn out but calm, desperately calm. She defied the doctors. What did
they know of women, of what women can do to regain a vanished beauty? She
would call in specialists, beauty doctors, quacks, the people who fill
the papers with their advertisements.
Then began a strange defile of rag-tag humanity to the Cadogan Square
door--women, men, of all nationalities and pretensions. But the evil was
beyond their power. At last an American specialist, who had won renown by
turning a famous woman of sixty into the semblance of a woman of
six-and-thirty--for a short time--was called in. Lady Holme knew that his
verdict must be final. If he could do nothing to restore her vanished
loveliness nothing could be done. After being closeted with her for a
long time he came out of her room. There were tears in his eyes.
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