None of his fellow-artists had ever dreamt of asking him if he were married. It never dawned on them to ask a man, who was apparently a bachelor and who obviously disliked the company of women, such a question; and he had no near relations to trouble their heads about him.
He was twenty-three when he married her, and she was eighteen. She was a slight, fair-haired girl with blue eyes and a lovable nature. He had worshipped her to the whole extent of his selfish disposition. At the end of a year a child had been born to them. It had lived two years—a toddling blue-eyed mite with fair hair like its mother. It had little caressing ways and soft baby cooings of laughter.
But one day the laughter had ceased, and from the nursery had come sounds of a child in anguish. A basin of boiling water had been left on the table by a careless nurse, and pulled over by a pair of small, clutching hands. A week of horror had followed. The child had lived for four days in agony, even drugs could not soothe its pain, or quiet the terrible sobbing voice. Jasper had fled from the house.
When he had returned his wife had met him white and tearless.
“My baby’s at peace, thank God,” she had said. And then she had laughed. She had not slept except from momentary exhaustion for four nights and days.
Later in the evening he had found her drunk in the dead child’s room. He had carried her from it and locked the door.
In the morning she had come to him and had tried to speak. His look of disgust had made speech impossible.
“Jasper——” she had said brokenly.
“I—I can’t say anything,” he had stammered. And he had gone from her.
When he had returned in the evening it was to find her again drunk. This time in the dining-room.