The things we do!

Linders sank back exhausted.
"That is better," he said, after a few minutes of struggling
breathing. "So I am a good deal hurt? Am I--am I going to die
by chance, M. le Docteur?"
He spoke in his old half-sarcastic, half-cynical way, but a
feeble, gasping voice, that made an effect of contrast, as of
the tragic face espied behind the grinning mask. Somehow it
touched Graham, burdened as he was with the consciousness of
the death-warrant he had to pronounce, and he paused before
answering. M. Linders noticed his hesitation.
"Bah!" he said, "speak, then; do you think I am afraid--a
coward that fears to know the worst? I shall not be the first
man that has died, nor, in all probability, the last. We ought
to be used to it by this time, _nous autres!_"
"Perhaps it is always best to be prepared for the worst," says
Graham, recovering himself at this address, and taking refuge
at last in a conventional little speech. "And though we must
always hope for the best, I do not think it right to conceal
from you, Monsieur, that you are very much injured and shaken.


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