believe in the darkness of London days.  What a selfish brute I am!  You’re hating me, aren’t you?  But it’s so good to be happy.  When I’m happy, I always feel that I’m fulfilling the law.  If you want to fulfil the law better, come to Egypt.  But you ought to bring the woman with you into the sunshine.  I can’t say any more; I needn’t say any more.  Now, you understand that it’s all right.  Do you remember our walk home from the concert that night, and how I said, ’I want to get into the light, the real light’?  Well, I’m in it, and how I wish that you and every one else could be in it too!  Forgive my egoism.  Write to me at this address when you have time.  Come to the Nile when next you take a holiday, and, with many messages from us both,

     “Believe us

     “Your friends,
     “N.  A. and R. A.

     “I sign for her.  She’s still in the garden, where I’m just going.”

A letter of success.  A letter subtly breathing out from every line the message, “You were wrong.”  A letter of triumph, devoid of the cruelty that triumph often holds.  A letter, surely, for a true friend to rejoice in?

Meyer Isaacson held it for a long while in his hands, forgetful of the tea that was standing at his elbow.

The day was dark and grim, a still, not very cold, but hopeless day of the dawning year.  And he, was he not holding sunshine?  The strange thing was that it did not warm him, that it seemed rather to add a shadow to London’s dimness.

Mrs. Armine without a maid!  He scarcely knew why, but that very small event, the dismissal of a maid, seemed almost to bristle up at him out of his friend’s letter.  He knew smart women well, and he knew that the average smart woman would rather do without the hope of Heaven than do without her maid.  Mrs. Armine must have changed indeed since she was Mrs. Chepstow.  Could she have changed so much?  Do people of mature age change radically when an enthusiastic influence is brought to bear upon them?

All day long Isaacson was pondering that question.

Nigel was knocking at a door.  Had it opened to him?  Would it ever open? 
He thought it would.  Probably he thought it had.

He and his wife were going away to be together “in all the delicious out-of-the-way places on the Nile,” and they were “happier than most people”—­even than most people in the region of gold.

And yet two sons had been born to Lord Harwich, and Nigel had been cut out of the succession!

When he had read that news, Isaacson had wondered what effect it would have in the menage on the Nile—­how the greedy woman would bear it.

Apparently she had borne it well.  Nigel did not even mention it.

And the departure of that maid!  Mrs. Armine without a maid!  Again that night as Isaacson sat alone reading Nigel’s letter that apparently unimportant fact seemed to bristle up from the paper and confront him.  What was the meaning of that strange renunciation?  What had prompted it?  “She packed off her French maid so as to be quite free.”  Free for what?