“You—your—” Johnny stared at him through the darkness.
“Yes.” Herman McCarthey’s tone was deep. “I was married once.
“No. She didn’t die. Just went away. They do that sometimes. She’s living yet, and happy, I hope. Successful too, and prosperous. Buys dresses for a big store in New York, swell dresses they say. Goes to Paris every year and all that. Ten thousand a year, maybe more.
“You see,” his tone became very thoughtful, “she married the wrong man. That happens too. I was only a cop, a plain ordinary policeman. Perhaps she married my uniform. Who knows?
“I brought her out here. She wasn’t happy. ‘Too still,’ she said.
“So we took a flat in the city. But she wanted what I couldn’t give, kind of a society life.”
For a time, he stared away to the west where the first stars were appearing. Then he spoke again.
“I bought this place on payments. When we moved to the city I couldn’t very well keep up the payments, so I let it all go; or thought I had.
“But when she’d left me and gone to New York I sort of felt like I’d like to come out and see the old place—the place where I’d spent my honeymoon.
“And what do you think? The man I’d bought the place from had saved it for me all that time! All I had to do was begin paying again, and it was mine.