But although I was sometimes ungracious enough to feel relieved by the removal of Annabel's restraining presence, there were times when my loneliness and desolation seemed almost more than I could bear. Though in one way I could not miss Fay more than I had done for the past eighteen months, in another way the absence of any feminine influence in the house seemed to emphasise her absence as it had never been emphasised before. As long as Annabel was still there, I only, so to speak, missed my wife personally: but after Annabel had gone away I missed Fay officially as well. I had always missed her in the spirit, but now I also missed her in the letter: and my active yearning for her was supplemented by a passive need. And underneath all my emotions—underneath even my love and longing for Fay—there was ever with me the consciousness of that condition which was known as "excommunication" in the Mediæval Church and as "conviction of sin" in the Evangelical Revival. I was not beyond reach of the love of God—no one could be that: but I was outside the pale of what old-fashioned theologists could call "His covenanted mercies." I did not think of myself as a lost soul: that expression was robbed of all meaning for me after I once realised with my heart as well as with my head Who it was That came to seek and to save that which was lost: but I knew that I was in the plight of that servant who, though His Lord forgave him his debt, failed to extend the like clemency to his fellow-servant, and so was cast into prison and not allowed to come thence until he should have paid the uttermost farthing. To use the beautiful language of our forefathers, I was no longer at peace with God.
This to me was the most terrible part of my sorrow. Fay's going had taken all the sunshine out of life: but this took away even the security of death. There seemed no hope for me anywhere.
I knew perfectly well that I myself was my own Hell: that it was nothing but my attitude towards Frank that consigned me to this outer darkness. Yet—knowing this—I could not bring myself to condone the wrong which he had done me. It was not that I wouldn't forgive him: I would willingly have pardoned him if I could; at least, so I thought at the time, and so I think still, but one can never quite trust the deceitfulness of the human heart. Whether I would not, or whether I could not forgive Frank Wildacre, God only knoweth; but anyway I did not forgive him: and consequently my soul went out into the wilderness to perish alone like the scapegoat of old, and my spiritual wretchedness assumed proportions beyond the description of any form of words.
It was in the spring after Annabel's marriage that I received the following letter from Lady Chayford—
"MY DEAR REGGIE,
"As the number of one's years grows more, and the number of one's friends correspondingly less, one feels compelled to grapple the residue to one's heart with hoops of steel. Therefore please come to us for a week-end and be grappled.
"Besides, we want to show you this great Babylon that we have built, and wherein we are now abiding. It is such a comfort to be securely planted in a country home of one's own, after having been potted-out for years in furnished houses; and the facts that our particular Babylon is not at all great, and that its hot-water supply leaves much to be desired in the way of heat, in no way imperil our fundamental happiness in the creation of our own hands. And the garden is lovely, although we cannot live in it entirely until it has been thoroughly aired, as both Paul and I have been indulging in those Entreat-me-not-to-leave-thee sort of colds which are so prevalent just now. Therefore so far we can only take walking exercise under our own vine and fig-tree: it is too cold to sit under them at present.
"I send you a selection of all the week-ends between now and Easter to choose from.
"Always your friend,
"ISABEL CHAYFORD.
Isabel's letter was kind, like herself; and it was kind of her to take pity on a lonely and desolate man like me: but all the same, I did not avail myself of her kindness.