"Well, Dr. Sommers, I hope we shall meet again when I am more myself."
When they returned to the room below, Mrs. Preston lit a lamp. After some minutes Sommers asked, "How long has this been going on?"
"For years—before he left college; he was taken out of Yale because of it.
All I know is what he tells when he is not—responsible."
"Ah!" the doctor exclaimed involuntarily.
"I never knew," Mrs. Preston added quickly, "until we had been married a year. He was away so much of the time, and he was very different then—I mean he didn't ramble on as he does now. He was not flabby and childish, not before the operation."
The doctor turned his face away.
"About two years ago some of the men he was with brought him home, drunk. Afterward he didn't seem to care. But he was away most of the time, travelling, going from place to place, always living in hotels, always drinking until some illness brought him back."
"And this time?" the doctor asked.
Mrs. Preston shut her lips, as if there were things she could not say yet.
"I was not living with him." In a few moments, she continued quietly: "I suppose I should have been but for one thing. He told me he was going to New York, and I found him with another woman, living in a hotel not a mile from our home. I don't know why I should have made so much of that. I had suspected for months that there were other women; but seeing it, knowing that he knew I had seen it! I nearly starved before I got work."