for my own husband!  See what it is to have obliged a gentleman.  He would let you pick him up when he was begging; he would stand and look on, and let you black his shoes, and sneer at you.  For you were always sneering at my James; you always looked down upon him in your heart, you know it!” She turned back to Jim.  “And now when he is rich,” she began, and then swooped again on me.  “For you are rich, I dare you to deny it; I defy you to look me in the face and try to deny that you are rich—­rich with our money—­my husband’s money——­”

Heaven knows to what a height she might have risen, being, by this time, bodily whirled away in her own hurricane of words.  Heart-sickness, a black depression, a treacherous sympathy with my assailant, pity unutterable for poor Jim, already filled, divided, and abashed my spirit.  Flight seemed the only remedy; and making a private sign to Jim, as if to ask permission, I slunk from the unequal field.

I was but a little way down the street, when I was arrested by the sound of some one running, and Jim’s voice calling me by name.  He had followed me with a letter which had been long awaiting my return.

I took it in a dream.  “This has been a devil of a business,” said I.

“Don’t think hard of Mamie,” he pleaded.  “It’s the way she’s made; it’s her high-toned loyalty.  And of course I know it’s all right.  I know your sterling character; but you didn’t, somehow, make out to give us the thing straight, Loudon.  Anybody might have—­I mean it—­I mean——­”

“Never mind what you mean, my poor Jim,” said I.  “She’s a gallant little woman and a loyal wife:  and I thought her splendid.  My story was as fishy as the devil.  I’ll never think the less of either her or you.”

“It’ll blow over; it must blow over,” said he.

“It never can,” I returned, sighing:  “and don’t you try to make it!  Don’t name me, unless it’s with an oath.  And get home to her right away.  Good by, my best of friends.  Good by, and God bless you.  We shall never meet again.”

“O Loudon, that we should live to say such words!” he cried.

I had no views on life, beyond an occasional impulse to commit suicide, or to get drunk, and drifted down the street, semi-conscious, walking apparently on air, in the light-headedness of grief.  I had money in my pocket, whether mine or my creditors’ I had no means of guessing; and, the Poodle Dog lying in my path, I went mechanically in and took a table.  A waiter attended me, and I suppose I gave my orders; for presently I found myself, with a sudden return of consciousness, beginning dinner.  On the white cloth at my elbow lay the letter, addressed in a clerk’s hand, and bearing an English stamp and the Edinburgh postmark.  A bowl of bouillon and a glass of wine awakened in one corner of my brain (where all the rest was in mourning, the blinds down as for a funeral) a faint stir of curiosity; and while I waited the next course, wondering the while what I had ordered, I opened and began to read the epoch-making document.