ONE WIFE’S HUSBAND. 
ome wonderful things- — made many people 
uippy. He made you unhappy. But you 
ire now prosperous. There is that, at least. 
.)o you feel hitter ? ” 
Osmond shook his head. 
“ I don’t know yet. I hope not. He is 
lead. T don’t want to be bitter. 1 — 
! e stood up suddenly. “ I must go home at 
mce. To tell them — they, too, have suffered, 
fee tor. I will come again to thank you 
properly.” 
The doctor opened the door, smiling. 
u Come back when you like,” he said. 
:i I understand.” 
Osmond found himself hatless in the street, 
his brain thundering. A taxi whirled by and 
he hailed it wildly. 
“ Waterloo,” he shouted. “ Quick.” 
The driver conceived him mad and made 
haste accordingly. But Osmond thought he 
crawled — crawled — though he gave the man 
a half-sovereign at the station. There was a 
train on the instant of departure, and that, 
too, crawled. To Osmond it was slower than 
| the taxi-cab. But at long last it stopped at 
Earlsfield. 
He was not five hundred yards from home, 
but he could not curb himself to walk it. lie 
leaped into a battered cab outside, giving his 
number and street as he leaped. 
Yet, for all his frenzied haste, he stopped 
long enough to raid the poor toyshop at the 
corner. He knew what Doreen wanted — 
innocently she had stabbed him throughout 
many months with little talcs of her desires. 
He took things by the armful. 
“ This ! ” he said, and snatched a doll. 
“ And this ! And this ! And the tea-set, 
yes ! That skipping-rope and this — ■ and 
this ” He only stopped for breath, paid 
ft r and piled the gaudy, glorious things into 
the cab, unwrapped, undisguised. 
“ Now, home ! ” he said to the staring 
cabman. 
Feverishly he crumpled four five-pound 
notes into a ball. That was for Isabel to 
spend that day — to start with — a beginning 
— an introduction to the new happiness that 
1 was to outshine even that of the old days. 
“ Wait ! ” he said to the cabman, and his 
arms brimming with scarlet and gold and 
green of many toys, he fumbled the latch-key 
home and entered the shabby, poverty- 
stricken passage. 
The house was very silent, and he saw lying 
on the rickety bamboo “ hall ” table an 
envelope. 
35 1 
Sudden fear knocked at his heart. He put 
down the toys and snatched the letter. It 
was addressed to “ Paul ” in his wife’s hand. 
He hesitated for an instant, half-sobbing as 
the reaction took him. Then he tore it open. 
It was as short as it was agonizing : — 
“ Dear Paul, — 1 cannot endure it any 
more. 1 saw your bank-book in your drawer, 
which you left unlocked this morning. I 
don’t know why you have treated Doreen and 
me in the way you have. You are rich and 
you have taken everything we liked away. 
Even Doreen, she has wanted a new Teddy 
for months, and you, with over a thousand 
pounds, couldn’t buy her one. 1 suppose 
there is someone else, only I wish you had not 
been a hypocrite over it. I am going away 
and I am taking Doreen, so you won’t have 
to invent excuses about the tax any more. — 
Isabel.” 
“ Oh, my God ! ” said Paul Osmond. 
He stared at the letter like a thing of stone. 
Then, suddenly, he heard a voice upstairs. 
“ Please, mamma — please, don’t — oh, 
please, don’t ” 
It was Doreen. They were not yet gone. 
And then Osmond was in the bedroom, 
white as death, gasping like a man who has 
run a long and desperate race. 
Isabel, dressed, with her hat on, was lying 
on the bed, weeping silently. Never had he 
dreamed of seeing a woman in such an attitude 
of misery and despair. Kneeling on the bed 
by her side, with urgent little hands straining 
anxiously to turn her mother’s face to her, 
was Doreen, dressed for going out, also. 
“ Isabel Isabel ! ” said Osmond, dropping 
the note, trampling it underfoot as he went 
across. 
He raised her as though she were no more 
than a child — as easily as he held Doreen 
with his other arm — and she hid her face on 
his shoulder, helplessly, like one utterly worn 
out. 
Pie let her be so for a moment, as he fought 
to steady himself. Doreen clung to him, with 
wide, frightened eyes. Then he spoke. 
“ Listen to me, my wife ” he said, 
strangely, and his voice rang in that poor 
room with a note that was clear and trium- 
phant and wonderful, so that the magic of it 
struck like a sword of deliverance through her 
shackles of grief and misery, and raised her, 
thrilling, all quivering and hot with tears, 
even as she was, to face him and to hear the 
tale of pain and joy and wonder that he had 
come to tell her. 
Vo), xlvi. — 45 . 
