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Smoke without Fire
177
“Dear Miss Merrill,” she read,
“After I left you this afternoon it struck me that it would be unwise, under the circumstances, for me to call on you this evening. Perhaps, too, there’s an undercurrent of cowardice in my mind. It’s easier to tell you in a letter what I have to than to say it directly. It’s so damned horrible. When I think of your sweetness and your kindness to me that last night at Tirau, the thought that you should suffer for it in this way makes me wish you’d never taken that revolver out of my hand. I can’t see any way out now to save you from a situation that’s infernally unfair and unjust. I’ve already written to Vera, and told her the whole truth of the affair. But it passes my comprehension how she could ever have believed such a thing of you or of me. It isn’t as though you were a stranger to her. She knew you well enough to be quite certain that you were as straight as any girl who ever lived. I don’t even know her address in Sydney, but I’ve sent the letter c/o Frank Miller, the Wairiri solicitor, whom she’s instructed to take proceedings. After she gets my letter, I don’t think she can possibly go on with the case. But all the same you’d better see Ford tomorrow and act on his advice. He isn’t my lawyer, but he’s a very old friend, and will do all he can for you.
“This thing that I’ve been trying to tell you is that Vera is suing me for divorce, and has named you as co-respondent. In some way it must have got out that you were with me in my room that last night at Tirau—and, the world being what it is, the inference is not that you were an angel of mercy and of pity then—one of the pluckiest and
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