He sent his fondest love to his little sweetheart Gracie, and expressed a sincere hope for her mother's future happiness. That letter later on in the morning he dropped into a post office.
Gracie's mother, who had journeyed home by the previous evening's train, read it, dry-eyed.
The dryness which burns.
CHAPTER XXII
WHITE LIES
Masters gathered in his luggage from Charing Cross cloak room; reached St. Katharine's Docks with it; got aboard La Mascotte.
He was first in the cabin; was arranging his things in an orderly way when Mr. Rigby came aboard. The second tenant of the cabin looked every bit of the wreck he had painted himself.
The author, quick of observation, gauged him to be a man of twenty-five or thereabouts. Younger possibly, but dissipation is an artist who graves deep lines; wrinkles are ageing things. Still of fine physique, but dull-eyed, heavy, face bluish and swollen.