Peter thought that Lucy must have infected Rhoda with some of her own appreciation of Thomas, opened her eyes to his true worth; for during the next week she was newly tender to him.  She bathed him every evening herself, only letting Peter help a little; she held him in her arms without wearying of his weight, and wasn’t really annoyed even when he was sick upon her shoulder, an unfortunate habit of Thomas’s.

But a habit, Peter thought, that Thomas employed with some discrimination; for the one and only one time that Guy Vyvian took him in his arms—­or rather submitted to his being put there by Rhoda—­Thomas was sicker than he had ever been before, with an immense completeness.

“Just what I always feel myself,” commented Peter in his own mind, as Thomas was hastily removed.  “I’m glad someone has shown him at last what the best people feel about him.”

Vyvian had come to call.  It was the first time Peter had met him since his marriage; he hoped it would be the last.  The object of the call was to inspect Thomas, Rhoda said.  Thomas was inspected, produced the impression indicated above, and was relegated to the region of things for which Vyvian had no use.  He detested infants; children of any sort, in fact; and particularly Thomas, who had Peter’s physiognomy and expressed Peter’s sentiments in a violently ill-bred way.

Peter, a little later, was very glad that Thomas had revealed himself thus openly on this occasion.  For it quite sealed Thomas’s fate, if anything more was needed to seal it than the fact that Thomas would be an impossible burden, and also belonged by right to Peter.  Anyhow, they left Thomas behind them when they went.

Rhoda wrote a scrawled note for Peter one foggy Monday morning, and hugged Thomas close and cried a little, and slipped out into the misty city with a handbag.  Peter, coming in at tea-time, found the note on the sitting-room chimney-piece.  It said:—­

“Don’t try to follow me, Peter, for I can’t come back.  I have tried to care for you more than him and be a good wife, but I can’t.  You know I told you when we got engaged that I cared for him, and I tried so hard to stop, and I thought I would be able, with you to help me, but I couldn’t do it.  For the first few months I thought I could, but all the time it was there, like a fire in me, eating me up; and later on he began writing to me, but for a long time I wouldn’t answer, and then he came to see me, and I said he mustn’t, but he’s been meeting me out and I couldn’t stop him, and at last it grew that I knew I loved him so that it was no use pretending any more.  I’d better go, Peter, for what’s the use of trying to be a good wife to you when all I care for is him.  I know he’s not good, and you are, but I love him, and I must go when he wants me.  It was all a mistake; you and I ought never to have married.  You meant it kindly, I know; you meant to help me and make me happy, but it was no use.  You and