"Oh! . . . What did you do?"
"Nothing. There was nothing to be done. I wasn't going to ruin myself by divorcing her. Luckily the war broke out and Rendell and I both enlisted the next day. He was killed fighting by my side at Neuve Chapelle, and I had the job of breaking the news to Lizzie. She was royally angry, poor Lizzle: told me I had no right to be alive when a better man than myself was dead. I agreed: Rendell was—the better man, though he didn't behave well to me. He died better than he lived. Out there it didn't seem to matter much. He died in my arms."
"Did you forgive your wife?"
"I never lived with her again, if that's what you mean. If I had been willing, which I wasn't, she never would have consented. She had the rather irrational prejudices of her type and class, and persisted in regarding me, or professing to regard me, as answerable for Rendell's death. It wasn't true," said Lawrence, turning his eyes on Isabel without any attempt to veil their agony. "If I'd meant to shoot him I should have shot him to his face. But I'd have saved him if I could. How on earth could any one do anything in such a hell as Neuve Chapelle? That week every officer in my company was either killed or wounded. But Lizzie had no imagination. She couldn't get beyond the fact that I was alive and he was dead."
"What became of her?"
"I'm sorry to say she went to the bad. She had money from both of us, but she spent it in public houses—didn't seem to care what happened to her after losing Arthur: a wretched life: it ended last January with her death from pneumonia after measles. That was what brought me back to England; I couldn't stand coming home before."
"Was it a relief when she died?"
"No, I was sorry," said Hyde. His wide black eyes, devil-driven beyond reticence, were riveted on Isabel's: apparently she no longer existed for him except as the Chorus before whom he could strip himself of the last rag of his reserve. "It brought it all back. I was besotted when I married her, and I remembered all that when I saw her dead. I forgot the other men. It was just as it was when Arthur died. I couldn't do anything for him, and he was in agony: he was shot through the stomach: it didn't seem to matter then that he had robbed me of Lizzie. I couldn't even get him a drop of water to drink. He died hard, did Rendell. It wasn't true, what Lizzie said. I'd have given my life for him. But I couldn't even make it easy for him to go."
"Poor Rendell," said Isabel softly, "and poor you! Oh, I'm so sorry—I'm so sorry!"
She was not afraid of Hyde now nor shy of him, she felt only an immense pity for him—this man who for no conceivable reason and without the slightest warning had flung the weight of his terrible past on her young shoulders. She longed to comfort him. But he was inaccessibly far away, isolated, his voice rapid and hard and clear, his manner normal: every nerve stripped bare but still rigid. Inexperienced as she was, Isabel had a shrewd idea of his immediate need. She took up the ring that Lawrence had wrenched off and slipped it on his finger again.