amuse him, and Mrs. Toller
taking a house beyond her means did not amuse him; but why on earth
should he--?

He put the thing to himself in his reasoning way, his brow wrinkled up:
She was his wife. She had left her home for his home. She had a right to
his interest in her ideas. He had a duty towards her ideas. Unkind.
Rotten.

Upon a sudden impulse he looked at his watch. Only just after twelve. He
could get back in time for lunch. Lonely for her, day after day, and
left as he had left her that morning. They could have a jolly afternoon
together. He could make it a jolly afternoon. Nona kept coming into his
thoughts--and more so after this Twyning business. He would have Mabel
in his thoughts.

He went in and told Mr. Fortune he rather thought of taking the
afternoon off if he was not wanted. He mounted his bicycle and rode
purposefully back to Mabel.

CHAPTER III

I

The free-wheel run down into Perry Green landed him a little short of
his gate,--not bad! Pirrip, the postman, whom he had passed in the
bicycle's penultimate struggles, overtook him in its death throes and
watched with interest the miracles of balancing with which, despite his
preoccupation of mind, habit made him prolong them to the uttermost
inch.

He dismounted. "Anything for me, Pirrip?"

"One for you, Mr. Sabre."

Sabre took the letter and glanced at the handwriting.

It was from Nona.

Her small, neat, masculine script had once been as familiar to him as
his own. It was curiously like his own. She had the same trick of not
linking all the letters in a word. Her longer words, like his own,
looked as if they were two or three short words close together. To this
day, when he did not get a letter from her once in a year--or in five
years--his address on an envelope in her handwriting was a thing he
could bring, and sometimes did bring with perfect clearness before his
mental vision.

He glanced at it, regarded it for slightly longer than a glance, and
with a little pucker of brows and lips, then made the action of putting
it, unopened, in his pocket. Then he rested the bicycle against his hip
and opened her letter.

"Northrepps. Tuesday." She never dated her letters. He used to be
always telling her about that. Tuesday was yesterday.

Dear Marko--We're back. We've been from China to Peru--almost. Come
up one day and be bored about it. How are you?

Nona.

He thought: "Funny she didn't mention she'd written