It was not in his nature to give way to bodily pain, but he was glad the men were gone, for he could not have borne much more in silence.

He turned his head to the wall and bit the edge of the leathern cushion.

Now and then his whole body shook convulsively.
He did not hear the door open again, for the torturing pain that shot through him dulled all his other senses.

He wished that he might faint away, even for a moment, but his nerves were too sound for that.

He was recalled to outer things by feeling a hand laid gently on his leg, and immediately afterwards he heard a man's voice, in a quietly gruff tone that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips.