will have it that such blows
are mortal; it is not so. Time is merciful.

"In the early morning I went back to London. I had fever on me--and was
delirious. I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not been so
used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--I can't
explain. It was a long while before I was up and about. Dalton nursed
me through it; his great heavy moustache had grown quite white. We never
mentioned her; what was the good? There were things to settle of course,
the lawyer--this was unspeakably distasteful to me. I told him it was
to be as she wished, but the fellow would come to me, with his--there,
I don't want to be unkind. I wished him to say it was my fault, but he
said--I remember his smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be
seen through, talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and
what's more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.

"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the
Russo-Turkish war, I received a letter from her. I have it here." He
took an old, yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread
it in his fingers, and sat staring at it. For some minutes he did not
speak.

"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth. He had deserted
her. Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian frontier, that
very year. If she had lived she would have been thirty-two next June;
not a great age.... I know I am what they call a crank; doctors will
tell you that you can't be cured of a bad illness, and be the same man
again. If you are bent, to force yourself straight must leave you weak
in another place. I must and will think well of women--everything done,
and everything said against them is a stone on her dead body. Could you
sit, and listen to it?" As though driven by his own question, he rose,
and paced up and down. He came back to the seat at last.

"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again this
evening. You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you. She had a
little daughter--Lucy has her now. My friend Dalton is dead; there would
have been no difficulty about money, but, I am sorry to say, that he
was swindled--disgracefully. It fell to me to administer his affairs--he
never knew it, but he died penniless; he had trusted some wretched
fellows--had an idea they would make his fortune. As I very soon
found, they had ruined him. It was impossible to let Lucy--such a dear
woman--bear