"My poor Honey! What a beast I have been! As for me—you will find me here right enough. I shall not go to Australia now!—but I shall never bear it better."
They parted a little later in heavy sorrow. Honor left him bowed and broken on the garden bench, and stumbled home unseeingly.
Afterwards, she learned in one of Dalton's letters—for he would not be denied that medium of communion with her—the full story of his past humiliation.
He had married a nurse at Guy's when he had been a medical student, and she had left him six months later for his best friend. She had been proved as faithless as she was handsome, with a baleful influence over men. Not long afterwards, the man she had led astray was killed in a railway accident, and since then, she had, on various occasions, tried, without success, to persuade Dalton to take her back. Apparently, she had not resigned hope with the years, for she had followed him to India, believing that time was her greatest ally, since it dims the memory of wrongs.
When he had discovered her presence in Calcutta, and learned that she had joined a nursing home in a fashionable quarter, he had applied for a transfer to quiet Muktiarbad, giving as his reason, his need of rest from his too strenuous labours in the capital. His desire was to gain time and to keep out of the way of any possibility of coming into professional contact with his wife.
At Muktiarbad he was able to forget his troubles, and, to his relief, seemed to have been forgotten by the Government and left to enjoy his peace undisturbed. However, through her connection with a nurses' association, his wife had accidentally learned of Nurse Grey's summons to Muktiarbad and had cleverly contrived to work things so as to go herself, instead.
"If I had only done the right thing in the beginning, and severed the tie, legally, things might have been very different today," was the burden of his cry. Instead, in the recklessness of despair, he had cut the ground from under his own feet, and by his desire for revenge, destroyed any possibility of future happiness for himself. Passion for the woman was dead. Her beauty revolted him; her character he loathed and despised. "It is amazing to me," he wrote in deep contrition and humility, "that such an egotistical, conscienceless blackguard as I, should have been given the inestimable boon of your wonderful love!—to be allowed to retain in my keeping such a pure and faithful heart! It is my most treasured possession. My feeling for Honor Bright is my religion. To the memory of her, Brian Dalton, one-time scoundrel, kneels in worship."
When Mrs. Bright returned home from Meredith's bedside and found Honor nerveless and prostrated with white cheeks and dark rings round her eyes, she was convinced that it was high time her daughter was sent to the hills.
"I told you so in March when the weather grew unbearable; and now, you, too, have got a touch of the sun!" But Honor's cheek was cool and symptoms of sun or heat stroke were lacking. "How do you feel?" the anxious lady questioned. Being in ignorance of the nurse's identity and having no clue to Honor's state, she was worried and at a loss.