eighteen months, to Australia.  We were married in Sydney.  He had work at that time in a shipping-office, but he did not manage to keep it.  I did not know why at first.  I was young, and I had always led a sheltered life.  Then one night I found that he had been drinking, and after that I understood—­many things.  I think I know what you will say of him when you read this.  It looks so crude written.  But, Piers, he was not a bad man.  He had this one fatal weakness, but he loved me, and he was good to me nearly always.”

Piers’ teeth closed suddenly and fiercely on his lower lip at this point; but he read on grimly with no other sign of indignation.

“Do you remember how I took upon myself once to warn you against losing your self-control?” The handwriting was not quite so steady here; the letters looked hurried, as if some agitation had possessed the writer.  “I felt I had to do it, for I had seen a man’s life completely wrecked through it.  I know he was one of the many that go under every day, but the tragedy was so near me.  I have never quite been able to shake off the dreadful memories of it.  He was to all outward appearance a strong-willed man, but that habit was stronger, though he fought and fought against it.  When he failed, he seemed to lose everything,—­self-respect, self-control, strength of purpose,—­everything.  But when the demon left him, he always repented so bitterly, so bitterly.  I had a little money, enough to live on.  He used to urge me to leave him, to go back to England, and live in peace.  As if I could have done such a thing!  And so we struggled on, making a desperately hard fight for it, till one awful night when he came home in raving delirium.  I can’t describe that to you.  I don’t want you to know what it was like.  I nursed him through it, but it was terrible.  He did not always know what he was doing.  At times he was violent.”

A drop of blood suddenly ran down Piers’ chin; he pulled out his handkerchief sharply and wiped it away, still reading on.

“He got over it, but it broke him.  He knew—­we both knew—­that things were hopeless.  We tried for a time to shut our eyes to the fact, but it remained.  And then one day very suddenly he roused himself and told me that he had heard of a job up-country and was going to it.  I could not stop him.  I could not even go with him.  And so—­for the first time since our marriage—­we parted.  He promised to come back to me for the birth of our child.  But before that happened he was dead, killed in a drunken brawl.  It was just what I had always feared—­the tragedy that overhung us from the beginning.  Piers, that’s all.  I’ve told it very badly.  But I felt you must know how my romance died; and how impossible it is that I should ever have another.  It didn’t break my heart.  It wasn’t sudden enough for that.  And now that he is gone, I can see it is best.  But the manner of his going—­that was the dreadful part.  I told you about my baby girl, how she was born blind, and how five years ago she died.