The outcome was all the more regrettable because Henry Fayne had staked so much on the success of his great venture. He had renounced innumerable bachelor friendships for Leanor, only to discover within a year of the celebrated social event, which had been their wedding, that he was linked for life to a captivating adventuress.
It was a hard blow. Only by desperate efforts, long sustained, had he been able to take himself in hand and force out of his thoughts the ugly images that obsessed him.
Leanor’s perfidy was a thing of which even his best friends never could have convinced him; yet now he knew it to be true—aye, knew it because she herself had boasted of it!
Fayne had striven hard to shut so hideous a specter out of his vision, partly because of a haunting fear that the thing which the discovery had set throbbing in his brain would get the better of him, that he would hurt somebody, or himself.
He had been an unusually well-balanced man, but it was only after many a stern struggle with the pulsating thing that hammered in his head that he surrendered the corpse of his outraged love to the divorce court and the gossip-mongers, and went sadly back to his bachelor haunts in the hope of forgetting. But he was appalled to find that he no longer fitted in.
The friends of the free and easy days of his celibacy were sincere enough in their pity for him, though in no way disposed to put themselves out seeking reclamation. In short, they might as well have said in chorus:
“You couldn’t have expected us to forewarn you; you’d have quit us cold. You had to discover it for yourself, and the operation of finding out has simply rendered you impossible as one of the old crowd. Sorry, old man, but, after all, it’s better that you should know.”
So Henry Fayne brooded, lost his nerve, and then, all of a sudden—disappeared.
The old circle knew his set and cynical face no more. There were rumors of mental breakdown and suicide, and there was one report (little credited, however) that the unfortunate fellow had drifted down into the wilds of South America and become an eccentric and a recluse.