FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to read the deep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came to pass that the only result of this incident was to make me sure that if we remained in London much longer my husband would go back to the other woman, and to say why (seeing that I did not love him) I should have become feverishly anxious to remove him from the range of this temptation.
Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father saying I had been unwell and begging him to use his influence with my husband to set out on the Egyptian trip without further delay.
My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the lines of my letter I do not know; what he said was this—
"Daughter—Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling him to quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there already. And while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as much as you please, for where it is a matter of money you must never let nobody walk over you.
Yours—&c."
The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Within twenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about trains and berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way to Marseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port Said.
Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with a passage-way between them. This admitted of entirely separate existences, which was well, for knowing or guessing my share in our altered arrangements, my husband had become even more morose than before, and no conversation could be sustained between us.
He spent the greater part of his time in his state-room, grumbling at the steward, abusing his valet, beating his bad-tempered terrier and cursing the luck that had brought him on this senseless voyage.