DEAR ARTHUR:—
I've a strong presentiment—and although I disbelieve in presentiments, mine generally come true—that in about half an hour my obituary will be in order. Certain easily foreseen contingencies have determined me to give it up. I shall never have a better chance to make my exit dramatically, and you've often assured me that that is the chief thing to consider in this connection. I've contemplated such a possibility long enough to have my affairs in order, and doubtless your wife will have a mass or two said for the repose of my soul. If you ever have a chance to do Helen a good turn, you may regard it as a personal favor to my ghost to do it. I've left you my Diaz as a sort of propitiatory sop.
Yours, of course, as ever, W. A.
"Oh, Arthur, Arthur!" Edith sobbed, breaking down again. "It is awful! It is just as he always talked. It is as light as if he were going out to drive."
"Naturally," was the response. "If you fancy Will would cry baby at death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him to leave me his Diaz; I always coveted it."
In the face of this, what was there for Edith to say. She was simply numbed to silence, and horror at her husband for the time deadened all sense of the shock of Dr. Ashton's death. It was not until later in the day that she was able to think of Helen.
"But, Arthur," she said then, "Mrs. Greyson?"
"Well; what of Mrs. Greyson?"
"I am going to see her."
"After your last night's indignation?"
"I may have been wrong," Mrs. Fenton said bravely, "I may have been hard. I realize every day how little I am able to judge for other people. Perhaps I am narrow, as you say. At least now her husband is dead I can show her my sympathy; and since I know more of him, it does not seem so strange that she left him."
"They left each other," he responded to these contradictory words. "But what can you say? The consolations of religion will hardly be available, and Helen never pretended to love Ashton?"
His tone wounded her, but she answered without a change of countenance:
"The death of the man who has been her husband can never be indifferent to any true woman. I shall not force her to listen to any religion she does not wish to hear."