The doctor sighed, too,—though not at all with either relief or content. To the doctor, the task before him loomed as absurd and unreal as if it were, indeed, the pulling-down of the stars and the moon—the carrying-out of his extravagant promise of the night before.
CHAPTER XII
THE TRAIL OF THE INK
Burke Denby was well pleased with the letter that he had sent to his wife, enclosing the ten-thousand-dollar check. He felt that it was both conclusive and diplomatic; and he believed that it carried a frankness that would prove to be disarming. He had every confidence that Helen would eventually (if not at once) recognize its logic and reasonableness, and follow its suggestions. With a light heart, therefore, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of the day with his father. By Saturday, however, a lively curiosity began to assail him as to just how Helen did take the note, after all. There also came unpleasantly to him a recurrence of the uncomfortable feeling that his abrupt departure from home Thursday night had been neither brave nor kind, and, in fact, hardly decent, under the circumstances. He decided that he would, when he saw Helen, really quite humble himself and apologize roundly. It was no more than her due, poor girl!
By Sunday, between his curiosity and his uneasy remorse, he was too nervous really to enjoy anything to the full; but he sternly adhered to his original plan of not going down to the Dale Street flat before Monday, believing, in his heart, that nothing could do so much good to both of them, under the circumstances, as a few days of thought apart from each other. Monday, however, found him headed for Dale Street; but in an hour he was back at Elm Hill. He was plainly very angry.
"She's gone," he announced, with a brevity more eloquent of his state of mind than a flood of words would have been.
"Gone! Where?"
"Home—to spend that ten thousand dollars, of course. She left this."
With a frown John Denby took the proffered bit of paper upon which had been scrawled:—