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Then the jaded mind of the Tojin-san wandered out into another scene of the past, and out of a longer, darker memory a woman’s cold, unsmiling face mocked him.

“Marry you!” she had cried, and not even her native courtesy could suppress the note of horror in her voice. “Oh—h!” she had cried out, covering her eyes shudderingly, “if you could but—see—yourself!”

The Tojin-san had indeed seen himself that night. Glaring back at him in a tragic grimness his own fearful face had looked at him from the mirror. Not that he had not known the blight upon him; but he had been dull, stupid, slow to realize its full horror.

Time was when the Tojin-san was as other men, smooth-skinned, level-eyed, very good to look upon. But in a God and Man forsaken little town crushed between the mountains and the sea, a young and ardent doctor of long ago had given himself up to a sublime heroism. Shoulder to shoulder with a few—one or two only beside himself—they had fought the plague of smallpox. From this fight the Tojin-san had emerged marked! With the optimism and blindness of youth, however, he had gone back to the woman he loved, and she had struck at him!