They told me to tell you that." And Crozier had not even cursed them.

He said to Jesse Bulrush that it was an old game to get hold of a patent that made a fortune for a song while the patentee died in the poor-house.

Yet that four days was time enough for a live man to do a "flurry of work," and he was fit enough to walk up their backs yet with hobnailed boots, as they said in Kerry when a man was out for war.
Over and over again this hovering tragedy drove sleep from his eyes; and in the spaces between there were a hundred fleeting visions of little and big things to torture him--remembrances of incidents when debts and disasters dogged his footsteps; and behind them all, floating among the elves and gnomes of ill-luck and disappointment, was a woman's face.

It was not his wife's face, not a face that belonged to the old life, but one which had been part of his daily existence for over four years.

It was the first face he saw when he came back from consciousness after the operation which saved his life--the face of Kitty Tynan.
And ever since the day when he had told the story of his life this face had kept passing before his eyes with a disturbing persistence.