When the train arrived at the terminus, he jumped into a cab, and drove straight to his club. No, he would not go to the smoke-room, he would go to his own private room, and there he would drink and forget. A few minutes later, he sat alone in his room, a bottle of whisky by his side. With steady hands he uncorked it, and poured out a large quantity; he filled the tumbler with soda-water, and looked at the yellow liquid as it sparkled in the glass.
"Here is my wife now," he cried. "She will be faithful to me, or even if she fails, there is that green devil called absinthe. No, no, the devil does not forsake a man while he has a five-pound note in his pocket."
Even then he did not lift the glass to his lips. After all, those months during which he had known Olive still counted. It was true that in spite of his resolutions he doubted whether he would ever meet her again; but those hours he had spent by her side were not without their influence. After all, to be a man was nobler than to be a beast. He recalled her words on the night he had made known his love to her. She had told him that the man who trusted in a woman for his salvation rested on a weak reed, and that only God could save a man. He remembered his answer too.
"If there is a God, I have given Him His chance," he cried, "and He has failed me. Now I choose this yellow devil. A fascinating devil, too. See how light and sparkling he is!"
He held the glass up to the light, and watched while the bright gaseous globules floated from the bottom of the glass to the top.
"Good-bye to false sentiment and false ideals, to false hopes and foolish fancies!" he cried, "and hereby I do take thee to be my lawful wedded wife from this day forward, to have and to hold, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, to love and to cherish, till death us do part!"
He laughed as he uttered the words.
"All joy to you Radford Leicester, on your wedding-day," he said aloud, "and may you and your wife be faithful to each other."
And still he hesitated. It might seem as though an invisible angel of goodness held his hand. Then his thoughts flew to the past, and again to the future. What had the future for him? He lifted the glass to his lips, and drank; when he set it down it was nearly empty.
"Ah, but this is the great forgetter," he said.