"When I was down-town I charged a box of sweets on your bill."
"Did you?" I replied. "Since when have you developed the taste?" Puddings and candies of any kind he had always avoided.
"They were not for myself but for the young girl, Miss S——, I wrote you about. She is now connected with the Library and I see quite a little of her, for I go there often to get books and collect data for my articles. Having been educated abroad she speaks French like a native, and being unusually intelligent she has helped me a great deal."
Occupied as I was at the time with organizing a theatrical entertainment for the benefit of The Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,—having to see and secure all the talent, I put off an invitation to bring her to the house for tea or to dine until the affair was over. Unfortunate omission! More unfortunate yet was my remark:—
"Remember Dorothy S——."
That was an episode Mr. Saltus wanted least of all to be reminded of. It sealed his lips more effectually than cement. When a few weeks later I inquired about his friend, he said that she had moved and that he had no idea what had become of her. Moved she had, but only a block or two. Once again his inability to face anything holding the remotest possibility of unpleasantness tangled him in an unnecessary deception.
During the holidays a telegram announcing the death of Mrs. Saltus in Paris reached him. This was only a few days before the preliminary papers in the divorce were to be issued.
In all justice to Mr. Saltus it must be said that he sincerely regretted the final separation came this way. It hit him between the eyes. From his new angle on life,—his belief that, reincarnation being a necessity, he must meet every ego he had in any way wronged and pay his debt to each, appalled him. However much he had attempted to justify himself in the past he did so no longer. The sudden passing over of one so closely connected with his early life—to whom he realized that he had never been all that he should—struck home. He went about the house softly and silently, passages of the Gitâ penetrating him like flame and steel.
His first impulse was to go East to meet his young daughter upon her return from abroad. The memory of her had become a beautiful dream to him. From that dream he was most anxious to awake and enjoy the reality. Her mother's wishes had been very explicit in the matter. She left the little girl to the guardianship of an aunt, with provisions in her will calculated to curtail the young girl's best interests in case her father took her. Over and over we thrashed the matter out between us. He had the law of the land on his side.
Persuaded at last that the only restitution he could make the mother for anything she had endured because of him, was through the child, he wrote his daughter asking her desire in the matter. Upon her replying that she wanted to carry out her mother's wishes, much against his will, Mr. Saltus yielded.