She wrote that the petition had been filed in court. The grounds were desertion. The summons would probably be in the same mail. Desertion. It struck him as wantonly malicious treachery. He had been careful always to send her the regular allowance which they had agreed upon before he left for Japan, and even more. He could certainly show in court—— Still, what was the use? He would not contest the case. If she wanted divorce, well, let her have it. A man was a fool who would try to hold a woman against her desire. And then, after all, why should he care? His affection for her had long since dissipated. The adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder—he had more than halfway believed that it might work out—but it had not in his case, nor, evidently, in hers either. He had no cause to object. On the contrary, she was giving him his freedom. It was the logical thing, after all.
Now, if that had come a year ago, before Sylvia had left Tokyo? Isabel must even then have considered divorce. She had probably done so even before he left America. Why could she not have done it then, when he and Sylvia—— Would she have married him? Plainly, she had liked him, but this other? Still, there would have been a chance. And now, now when opportunity had finally come, it was so absurdly futile. He had no means of reaching Sylvia. She had disappeared utterly, had gone as if she had vanished into space. No one appeared to know where she might be. Evidently she had wished to disassociate herself entirely from Tokyo, to sever every thread that might connect her with Japan. He had written a couple of times on chance clews. She had been seen by some one somewhere along the upper Yangtze. A note in the personal column of a Hongkong paper showed that she had gone from that place to Macao. Report had it that she had visited Singapore. He had written each time, but nothing had ever come of it. So he had given up thought of her, forced himself to blot that chapter out of his life, to consider it a definitely closed incident. Now, it was too late. Even if he knew where to find her, what would she say should he gallop up to her the moment he was free. One could never know how a woman might take things. And then she would by this time undoubtedly have found new friends, might be engaged, married, for all he might know. No, even if he might find her, should she have been placed out of his reach through some other man, that, he knew, must hurt him like the devil. It would reopen, grievously lacerate the old wound which seemed now to have all but healed. After all, he had come to appreciate, enjoy in recent months his safety from emotional turmoil. One risked too much, paid too heavily for the raptures of infatuation. He would remain safe.
So that phase of the situation was disposed of. He would allow himself to consider it no more. Now for the other phases.
He lit his pipe and leaned back to think it over, to reason it out. Logically he should be pleased; but he could not make himself feel so. It was an ugly word, "desertion"; smacked of being a scoundrel. Still, of course, divorces were common things, and every one knew that the law required, for some obscure reason, that the grounds must always be clothed in terms implying disgrace of some kind. Well, let it go.
Still, he was oddly dissatisfied. He tried to analyze his feelings. Gradually, as he smoked, it came to him that what he resented was the suddenness of entire change in his status of life, the necessity for making new adjustments. He would now be alone, under a changed moral code, a different mode of life. Still, he was being made free. What he lost was, of course, only obligations. To blazes with the entire business!
He crumpled the letter and threw it out of the window impulsively. He would be rid of the whole thing, like that; would write her to go ahead. It was the end. Undoubtedly he would soon find himself pleased, as he should be, that a relation had been severed which there could be no possible reason to continue.
"Kent-san."
It was a woman's voice, low, clear. He looked about, startled out of his thoughts. There she was, across the alley, in her window, his geisha neighbor. Through the bamboo bars she was holding out to him something white. He recognized the crumpled letter. What a perverse grotesquery of fate that his divorce announcement should, eccentrically, cause his acquaintance with this woman, this professional in the arts of affection, whom he had heretofore known only mutely, through her formal courtesy of a smile when she had happened to meet his eye from her window.
"It came right in through the window. It frightened me. It hit me right on the head." She was laughing, but her eyes asked for explanation. Of course—one did not throw things through windows, even at geisha.