hburnham Tragedy",
just because it is so sad, just because there was no current to draw
things along to a swift and inevitable end. There is about it none of
the elevation that accompanies tragedy; there is about it no nemesis, no
destiny. Here were two noble people--for I am convinced that both Edward
and Leonora had noble natures--here, then, were two noble natures,
drifting down life, like fireships afloat on a lagoon and causing
miseries, heart-aches, agony of the mind and death. And they themselves
steadily deteriorated. And why? For what purpose? To point what lesson?
It is all a darkness.

There is not even any villain in the story--for even Major Basil, the
husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate
Edward--even Major Basil was not a villain in this piece. He was a
slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow--but he did not do anything to
Edward. Whilst they were in the same station in Burma he borrowed a
good deal of money--though, really, since Major Basil had no
particular vices, it was difficult to know why he wanted it. He
collected--different types of horses' bits from the earliest times to
the present day--but, since he did not prosecute even this occupation
with any vigour, he cannot have needed much money for the acquirement,
say, of the bit of Genghis Khan's charger--if Genghis Khan had a
charger. And when I say that he borrowed a good deal of money from
Edward I do not mean to say that he had more than a thousand pounds from
him during the five years that the connection lasted. Edward, of course,
did not have a great deal of money; Leonora was seeing to that. Still,
he may have had five hundred pounds a year English, for his menus
plaisirs--for his regimental subscriptions and for keeping his men
smart. Leonora hated that; she would have preferred to buy dresses for
herself or to have devoted the money to paying off a mortgage. Still,
with her sense of justice, she saw that, since she was managing
a property bringing in three thousand a year with a view to
re-establishing it as a property of five thousand a year and since the
property really, if not legally, belonged to Edward, it was reasonable
and just that Edward should get a slice of his own. Of course she had
the devil of a job.

I don't know that I have got the financial details exactly right. I am
a pretty good head at figures, but my mind, still, sometimes mixes up
pounds with dollars and I get a figure wrong. Anyhow, the