The Breaking Point

There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Walter Wheeler burst out: "Confound it, Dick, I'm sorry. I've fought your battles for months,

not here, but everywhere. But here's a battle I can't fight. She isn't

angry. You'll have to get her angle of it. I think it's something like

this. She had built you up into a sort of superman. And she's--well, I

suppose purity is the word. She's the essence of purity. Then, Leslie

told me this to-night, she learned from him that you were back with the

woman in the case, in New York."

And, as Dick made a gesture: "There's no use going to him. He was off the beaten track, and he knows

it. He took a chance, to tell her for her own good. He's fond of her. I

suppose that was the last straw."

He sat still, a troubled figure, middle-aged and unhandsome, and very

weary.

"It's a bad business, Dick," he said.

After a time Dick stirred.

"When I first began to remember," he said, "I wanted whisky. I would

have stolen it, if I couldn't have got it any other way. Then, when I

got it, I didn't want it. It sickened me. This other was the same sort

of thing. It's done with."

Wheeler nodded.

"I understand. But she wouldn't, Dick."

"No. I don't suppose she would."

He went away soon after that, back to the quiet house and to David.

Automatically he turned in at his office, but Reynolds was writing

there. He went slowly up the stairs.

Ann Sayre was frankly puzzled during the next few days. She had had a

week or so of serenity and anticipation, and although things were not

quite as she would have had them, Elizabeth too impassive and even

Wallie rather restrained in his happiness, she was satisfied. But Dick

Livingstone's return had somehow changed everything.

It had changed Wallie, too. He was suddenly a man, and not, she

suspected, a very happy man. He came back one day, for instance, to say

that he had taken a partnership in a brokerage office, and gave as his

reason that he was sick of "playing round." She rather thought it was to

take his mind off something.

A few days after the funeral she sent for Doctor Reynolds. "I caught

cold at the cemetery," she said, when he had arrived and was seated

opposite her in her boudoir. "I really did," she protested, as she

caught his eye. "I suppose everybody is sending for you, to have a

chance to talk."