I told him what had been done and how we had failed. There had not been many days for me between giving my promise of help and involving myself in the encounter with Grayle, but George and his sleuth-hound colleague continued to ransack every resource suggested by friendship or professional pique. And at the end of three weeks they were as near finding her as at the beginning.
"She is either staying with friends or hiding away in rooms somewhere," I told O'Rane as my conclusion. "And I can't suggest any way of tracking her down. It's a waste of time to advertise; she's hiding, because she doesn't want to be found. If I may advise you, wouldn't it be wiser to leave her where she is? I take it that you've stopped proceedings?"
"I've stopped proceedings," he answered, and his chin dropped forward on to his chest so that I should not see the movements of his thin face.
"Then there's nothing to discuss with her. If at any time in the future she or you want to regain your liberty, you can start out to get in touch with her then. Any question of stopping her allowance is mere persecution—and I don't even know that it's likely to be successful persecution. She drew a cheque for twenty pounds on the day she left Grayle; and she's not drawn a penny since. It'll take some time to exhaust her balance, and, if she finds that her quarterly cheque isn't being paid regularly, you know even better than I do that she'll starve or beg or work her fingers to the bone before she'll give in."
O'Rane was long without answering. Then he dragged himself out of the chair, shook hands and bade me good-night.
"I must have a look for her myself," he murmured, as though he were thinking aloud.
"O'Rane, she's clearly avoiding you," I pleaded. "Will it do any good?"
"I must meet her!" he cried tremulously.
If I said a very brutal thing then, I said it because I thought that in the long run it was kindest.
"Let me tell you one thing before you go," I begged him. "O'Rane, you're not facing realities, you know; you're playing with the idea of reconciliations, you think that it's possible to get your wife back and to live with her again. My dear boy, you must use your imagination. Think of the mental process that took her away, think what her experience has been, think what her mental state must be now. She will never come back to you. And you couldn't live with her, even if she did." O'Rane went out of the room without answering by word or gesture.