“I’ve a good mind to take you at your word,” he said, at last.

“Good-night,” said his wife, briskly.  “If you send me your address, I’ll send your things on to you.  There’s no need for you to call about them.”

Hardly realizing the seriousness of the step, Mr. Hatchard closed the front door behind him with a bang, and then discovered that it was raining.  Too proud to return for his umbrella, he turned up his coat-collar and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked slowly down the desolate little street.  By the time he had walked a dozen yards he began to think that he might as well have waited until the morning; before he had walked fifty he was certain of it.

He passed the night at a coffee-house, and rose so early in the morning that the proprietor took it as a personal affront, and advised him to get his breakfast elsewhere.  It was the longest day in Mr. Hatchard’s experience, and, securing modest lodgings that evening, he overslept himself and was late at the warehouse next morning for the first time in ten years.

His personal effects arrived next day, but no letter came from his wife, and one which he wrote concerning a pair of missing garments received no reply.  He wrote again, referring to them in laudatory terms, and got a brief reply to the effect that they had been exchanged in part payment on a pair of valuable pink vases, the pieces of which he could have by paying the carriage.

In six weeks Mr. Hatchard changed his lodgings twice.  A lack of those home comforts which he had taken as a matter of course during his married life was a source of much tribulation, and it was clear that his weekly bills were compiled by a clever writer of fiction.  It was his first experience of lodgings, and the difficulty of saying unpleasant things to a woman other than his wife was not the least of his troubles.  He changed his lodgings for a third time, and, much surprised at his wife’s continued silence, sought out a cousin of hers named Joe Pett, and poured his troubles into that gentleman’s reluctant ear.

“If she was to ask me to take her back,” he concluded, “I’m not sure, mind you, that I wouldn’t do so.”

“It does you credit,” said Mr. Pett.  “Well, ta-ta; I must be off.”

“And I expect she’d be very much obliged to anybody that told her so,” said Mr. Hatchard, clutching at the other’s sleeve.

Mr. Pett, gazing into space, said that he thought it highly probable.

“It wants to be done cleverly, though,” said Mr. Hatchard, “else she might get the idea that I wanted to go back.”

“I s’pose you know she’s moved?” said Mr. Pett, with the air of a man anxious to change the conversation.

“Eh?” said the other.

“Number thirty-seven, John Street,” said Mr. Pett.  “Told my wife she’s going to take in lodgers.  Calling herself Mrs. Harris, after her maiden name.”

He went off before Mr. Hatchard could recover, and the latter at once verified the information in part by walking round to his old house.  Bits of straw and paper littered the front garden, the blinds were down, and a bill was pasted on the front parlor window.  Aghast at such determination, he walked back to his lodgings in gloomy thought.