Page:Restless Earth.djvu/78

“Wife?”

For a moment Harley sat bolt upright, staring wildly ahead and beating his breast with clenched hands.

“I ought never to have let her go!” he cried. “Oh, what a damned fool a man can be! What a damned fool!”

His head fell forward upon his clenched fingers and he slumped in his seat.

Roy became intent on his driving. The low whine of the engine rose in pitch and volume until it became a subdued shriek—a shriek which drowned the distressing sound of a grown man’s sobbing.

****

On the morning of this tragic February day, at the moment when her husband ceased pacing the drawing-room in New Plymouth and sat to write the first abortive attempt at the letter which was to shut her out of his life, Grace Harley stood at the window of her room on the first floor of the Masonic Hotel in Napier.

She was dressed for the street in a neat summer frock which emphasised the daintiness of her small figure; her fingers were mechanically adjusting her georgette collar; her gaze was upon the glass-calm blue of the sea which showed between the tall Norfolk Island pines of the Marine Parade.

It was a glorious morning, and she was thinking how happy she had been during the glorious mornings of her honeymoon, when her every action and mood had found immediate reflection in the man who had been her willing slave. Now, the shimmering glory of the day added to her loneliness.

She sighed unhappily.

“My dear! My dear!” protested the little old lady who sat upon the bed, where she assisted Joan in the toilet of a large sleeping doll. “You mustn’t