s heart he was grieving. He
wanted them, both of them. The hope that Nellie would appeal to him
for forgiveness grew smaller as the days went by, and yet he did not
let it die. His loyal imagination kept it alive, fed it with daily
prayers and endless vistas of a reconstructed happiness for all of
them.

Toward the end of his first summer at Davis' he was served with the
notice that Nellie had instituted proceedings against him in Reno. It
was in the days of Reno's early popularity as a rest cure for those
suffering from marital maladies; impediments and complications were
not so annoying as they appear to be in these latter times of ours.
There was also a legal notice printed in the Blakeville _Patriot_.

The shock laid him up for a couple of days. If his uncle meant to
encourage him by maintaining an almost incessant flow of invectives,
he made a dismal failure of it. He couldn't convince the heartsick
Harvey that Nellie was "bad rubbish" and that he was lucky to be rid
of her. No amount of cajolery could make him believe that he was a
good deal happier than he had ever been before in all his life; he
wasn't happy and he couldn't be fooled into believing he was. He was
miserable--desperately miserable. Looking back on his futile attempts
to take his own life, he realised now that he had missed two golden
chances to be supremely happy. How happy he could be if he were only
dead! He was rather glad, of course, that he failed with the pistol,
because it would have been such a gory way out of it, but it was very
stupid of him not to have gone out pleasantly--even immaculately--by
the other route.

But it was too late to think of doing it now. He was under contract
with Mrs. Davis, Mr. Davis having passed on late in the spring, and he
could not desert the widow in the midst of the busy season. His last
commission as a crayon solicitor had come through Mrs. Davis, two
months after the demise of Blakeville's leading apothecary. She
ordered a life-size portrait of her husband, to be hung in the store,
and they wept together over the prescription--that is to say, over the
colour of the cravat and the shade of the sparse thatch that covered
the head of the departed. Mrs. Davis never was to forget his
sympathetic attitude. She never quite got over explaining the
oversight that had deprived him of the distinction of being one of the
pall-bearers, but she made up for it in a measure by insisting on
opening the soda fountain at