The Withered Arm

She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before. But her woman’s nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm. ‘What came by a spell will go by a spell surely, ’ she would say. Whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility of it: then the words of the conjuror, ‘It will turn your.blood, ’ were seen to be capable of a scientific no less than a ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned, and urged her on agai