"Tell me, where is your wife?" she asked.
"In America."
"It is hopeless with her?"
"Utterly and irretrievably hopeless."
"It has been for long?"
"For years."
"And for the sake of your principles," she went on, almost angrily,
"your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let
your life shrivel up."
"I can't help it," he answered. "What would you have me do? Stand in
the market place and shout my needs?"
She clung to his arm. "You dear thing!" she said. "You're a great
baby!"
They were in the shadow of the entrance to the flats. He suddenly bent
over her; his lips were almost on hers. There was a frightened gleam in
her eyes, but she made no movement of retreat. Suddenly he drew himself
upright.
"That wouldn't help, would it?" he said simply. "Thank you, all the
same, Nora. Good-by!"
On his table, when he entered his rooms that night, lay the letter for
which he had craved. He opened it almost fiercely. The few lines
seemed like a message of hope:
"Don't laugh at me, dear friend, but I am coming to London for a week or
two, to my little house in Charles Street.
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