r than I was, a very brilliant man and
as hard as nails: Rendell, his name was: an athlete, a tophole
centre-forward, with a fascinating Irish manner and blazing blue
eyes. To him I told my tale, because we were Damon and Pythias,
and I couldn't have kept a secret from him to save my life. I
was an ingenuous youngster in those days: never was such a pal as
my pal! He saw me through my marriage and afterwards I took him
with me once or twice to Myrtle Villa: it may illuminate the
situation if I say that it made me all the prouder of Lizzie when
I saw Rendell admired her: never was such an idyll as my manage a
trois! Unluckily, one evening when I turned up unexpectedly I
found them together."

"Oh! . . . What did you do?"

"Nothing. There was nothing to be done. I wasn't going to ruin
myself by divorcing her. Luckily the war broke out and Rendell
and I both enlisted the next day. He was killed fighting by my
side at Neuve Chapelle, and I had the job of breaking the news to
Lizzie. She was royally angry, poor Lizzle: told me I had no
right to be alive when a better man than myself was dead. I
agreed: Rendell was--the better man, though he didn't behave
well to me. He died better than he lived. Out there it didn't
seem to matter much. He died in my arms."

"Did you forgive your wife?"

"I never lived with her again, if that's what you mean. If I had
been willing, which I wasn't, she never would have consented.
She had the rather irrational prejudices of her type and class,
and persisted in regarding me, or professing to regard me, as
answerable for Rendell's death. It wasn't true," said Lawrence,
turning his eyes on Isabel without any attempt to veil their
agony. "If I'd meant to shoot him I should have shot him to his
face. But I'd have saved him if I could. How on earth could any
one do anything in such a hell as Neuve Chapelle? That week
every officer in my company was either killed or wounded. But
Lizzie had no imagination. She couldn't get beyond the fact that
I was alive and he was dead."

"What became of her?"

"I'm sorry to say she went to the bad. She had money from both
of us, but she spent it in public houses--didn't seem to care
what happened to her after losing Arthur: a wretched life: it
ended last January with her death from pneumonia after measles.
That was what brought me back to England; I couldn't stand coming
home before."

"Was it a relief when she died?"

"No, I was sor