"It's queer how tragedy and going to sea give you the same feeling."
It was not pity—oh, no—that had made him want to marry her. And it was not love. And it was not because he needed an anchor. Not he. He was not that kind. It was simply because she was his opportunity. Yes; that was the word. And she had never suspected.
Not that afternoon in the vacant lot, when he had inquired so exhaustingly as to her bank account.
Not the next week, when he appeared from town in the middle of the afternoon, all unheralded and paler than ordinary, with papers to sign, and the exhilarating news that the insurance companies had paid up, and a new bank-book with her name and comforting fat figures in it.
How desperately glad she had been over that. For hot shame possessed her at her appearance—shabby clothes and hardly any of them, when his ready-made dust-colored garments had immediately been replaced by the well-fitting blue serge that was her special weakness in masculine attire. She had invested heavily in frills and slowly regained her self-respect.
And not when he had appeared with a list of her property—how had he come by that list?—stating that he had made arrangements to lease certain pieces and rebuild at once on the others, and asking her approval of the final arrangements.
She had not suspected him then, either, idiot that she was. She had been too busy being rested, being thankful, being happy in the big garden, tucked away from the people who had failed her and the ghastly city and the memory of its great disaster.
She turned to the letter again. Bixler McFay had always written a good letter. This time he quite surpassed himself.
Heart-broken, unreconciled; his hopes shipwrecked; his faith destroyed. How could she have treated him so? She had been practically engaged to him; and she had left him a prey to every horrible emotion at a time when one word would have put his mind at rest. No clew as to her whereabouts by which he could trace her.
She passed that over with her little crooked, sarcastic smile. She had telegraphed and written both—and the second letter had been registered. He had probably forgotten that little fact. But it was of little consequence now. The sting lay in what followed.