But he had one more sorrow to digest before the end. There arrived
a letter from the little wife--the natural sequence of the others if
Dicky had only known it--and the burden of that letter was "gone
with a handsomer man than you." It was a rather curious production,
without stops, something like this:--"She was not going to wait
forever and the baby was dead and Dicky was only a boy and he would
never set eyes on her again and why hadn't he waved his handkerchief
to her when he left Gravesend and God was her judge she was a wicked
woman but Dicky was worse enjoying himself in India and this other
man loved the ground she trod on and would Dicky ever forgive her
for she would never forgive Dicky; and there was no address to write
to."
Instead of thanking his lucky stars that he was free, Dicky
discovered exactly how an injured husband feels--again, not at all
the knowledge to which a boy is entitled--for his mind went back to
his wife as he remembered her in the thirty-shilling "suite" in
Montpelier Square, when the dawn of his last morning in England was
breaking, and she was crying in the bed.
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