More than ever now I felt the gulf that divided us. I could not pass one single hour with him in comfort. My life was becoming as cold as an empty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness with which I had removed my husband from a scene in which he had at least lived the life of a rational creature, when an unexpected event brought me a thrill of passing pleasure.
Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table, and the doctor himself was a young Irishman of three or four-and-twenty, as bright and breezy as a March morning and as racy of the soil as new-cut peat.
Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by chance I knew Martin Conrad.
"Martin Conrad?" I repeated, feeling (I hardly knew why) as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck.
"Yes, Mart Conrad, as we call him. The young man who has gone out as doctor with Lieutenant ——'s expedition to the South Pole?"
A wave of tender feeling from my childhood came surging up to my throat and I said:
"He was the first of my boy friends—in fact the only one."
The young doctor's eyes sparkled and he looked as if he wanted to throw down his soup-spoon, jump up, and grasp me by both hands.
"God bless me, is that so?" he said.
It turned out that Martin and he had been friends at Dublin University. They had worked together, "roomed" together, and taken their degrees at the same time.