darling old Jim, for Frank Woods, or any other man, was unthinkable.
Jim sank on a bench and turned a face to me that had grown utterly
haggard.

"It's true, Bupps! I found this on the table when I went home to
lunch."

He held out a crumpled note written in Helen's rather mannish back-hand.

"Jim,

"It is now ten-thirty. Frank is coming for me at eleven. He has made
me realize that, loving him the way I do, I would be doing you a
horrible injustice to keep up the wretched pretense of being your wife.

"Had you left any other way open, I would have taken it, but you
refused a divorce. I hate to hurt you the way I must, but try to
understand and forgive me.

"Helen."

I turned toward Jim. His chin was sunk in his hands. Two men came in
from the tennis-courts and nodded as they went by.

"What have you done?" I asked.

He raised his head, and on his face was written incalculable misery.

"Nothing!" he answered, dropping his hands hopelessly. "What can I do,
except let them go and get a divorce as soon as possible? It's my
fault. After we--quarreled the other night, she asked me to divorce
her, and I refused. God, Bupps! If you only knew how much I love her
and how hard I've tried to make her love me. And she did love me till
Woods came along."

I hurried up my dressing, turning over in my mind the details of Jim's
married life. In the light of the latest developments, I realized the
painful fact that I was partly to blame myself. Helen hadn't really
loved Jim when she married him. Oh, she'd loved him in the same way
she'd loved a lot of other men whom she'd been more or less engaged to
at one time or another. She had married Jim, because it had been the
thing to do that year, to get married; and she realized that Jim loved
her more and could give her more than any of the others. Where I came
in was that I had urged her to marry Jim because he was the best man in
the world and because I wanted him for my brother-in-law.

I remembered now how cold Helen had been, even during their engagement,
trumping up almost any excuse to keep from spending an evening alone
with the man who was to be her husband. It had made me so hot that I
had reproached her even in Jim's presence. My words didn't seem to
affect Helen any, but they did affect Jim a lot. He had taken me for a
long ride in his car and filled me full of moonshine about how he was
unworthy of her and how he would win her love after th