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fend it I could bring you back to your husband and your children, I’d do it.

“I’m afraid that’s very mixed. My going through the humiliation of the Divorce Court couldn’t help to bring you back. What I mean is that I’d suffer an equal humiliation if in this way I could only give Mr. Holmes back some happiness. He’s back at Tirau again now as manager, and things may not be so bad as he thought at first they would be. If you could have seen him as I saw him that night your heart would have melted with pity—I know it would—and although perhaps there was a little truth in what you said that first night, when I arrived at Tirau, about being jealous of me, you grew to be a little fond of me too. And you’re so handsome and so fascinating yourself, why need you be jealous of any one? But no beauty and no fascination can revive a love that’s dead. Do you think Gerald Waring would marry you? I don’t. There’s a poem of Kipling’s, isn’t there, with a line—‘When a man is tired there is naught will bind him!’? Oh, please, Mrs. Holmes, don’t think this is meant cruelly—it isn’t. It’s just truth. And if he did marry you, it wouldn’t mean any happiness to you—only misery. I don’t believe he’d be faithful to any one. But don’t think of me in connection with him. I don’t ever want to see him again.

“I know this letter is all mixed up and I haven’t said what I want to properly, but I’m so terribly tired tonight. Love—real love—affection and trust and kindness—isn’t so easy to find in this world. And you’ve been given all that by your husband. He’d never change towards you. You’re all the