We did not know at first, of course, that the
separation was permanent. It proved so, however; and Corvet, I know
now, had understood it to be that way from the first. Mrs. Corvet went
to France--the French blood in her, I suppose, made her select that
country; she had for a number of years a cottage near Trouville, in
Normandy, and was active in church work. I know there was almost no
communication between herself and her husband during those years, and
her leaving him markedly affected Corvet. He had been very fond of her
and proud of her. I had seen him sometimes watching her while she
talked; he would gaze at her steadily and then look about at the other
women in the room and back to her, and his head would nod just
perceptibly with satisfaction; and she would see it sometimes and
smile. There was no question of their understanding and affection up
to the very time she so suddenly and so strangely left him. She died
in Trouville in the spring of 1910, and Corvet's first information of
her death come to him through a paragraph in a newspaper."

Alan had started; Sherrill looked at him questioningly.

"The spring of 1910," Alan explained, "was when I received the bank
draft for fifteen hundred dollars."

Sherrill nodded; he did not seem surprised to hear this; rather it
appeared to be confirmation of something in his own thought.

"Following his wife's leaving him," Sherrill went on, "Corvet saw very
little of any one. He spent most of his time in his own house;
occasionally he lunched at his club; at rare intervals, and always
unexpectedly, he appeared at his office. I remember that summer he was
terribly disturbed because one of his ships was lost. It was not a bad
disaster, for every one on the ship was saved, and hull and cargo were
fully covered by insurance; but the Corvet record was broken; a Corvet
ship had appealed for help; a Corvet vessel had not reached port....
And later in the fall, when two deckhands were washed from another of
his vessels and drowned, he was again greatly wrought up, though his
ships still had a most favorable record. In 1902 I proposed to him
that I buy full ownership in the vessels I partly controlled and ally
them with those he and Spearman operated. It was a time of
combination--the railroads and the steel interests were acquiring the
lake vessels; and though I believed in this, I was not willing to enter
any combination which would take the name of Sherrill off th