rstand."

And Myra gladly left it at that. It would have been so very difficult to
explain further, without explaining Michael; and all that really mattered
was, that--with or without explanation--Jim Airth understood.

"And now--tell me," she suggested, softly.

"Ah, yes," he said, pulling himself together, with an effort. "My
experience also misses the Best, and likewise covers ten long years. But
it is a harder one than yours. I married, when a boy of twenty-one, a
woman, older than myself; supremely beautiful. I went mad over her
loveliness. Nothing seemed to count or matter, but that. I knew she was
not a good woman, but I thought she might become so; and even if she
didn't it made no difference. I wanted her. Afterwards I found she had
laughed at me, all the time. Also, there had all the time been
another--an older man than I--who had laughed with her. He had not been
in a position to marry her when I did; but two years later, he came into
money. Then--she left me."

Jim Airth paused. His voice was hard with pain. The night was very black.
In the dark silence they could hear the rhythmic thunder of the waves
pounding monotonously against the cliff below.

"I divorced her, of course; and he married her; but I went abroad, and
stayed abroad. I never could look upon her as other than my wife. She had
made a hell of my life; robbed me of every illusion; wrecked my ideals;
imbittered my youth. But I had said, before God, that I took her for my
wife, until death parted us; and, so long as we were both alive, what
power could free me from that solemn oath? It seemed to me that by
remaining in another hemisphere, I made her second marriage less sinful.
Often, at first, I was tempted to shoot myself, as a means of righting
this other wrong. But in time I outgrew that morbidness, and realised
that though Love is good, Life is the greatest gift of all. To throw it
away, voluntarily, is an unpardonable sin. The suicide's punishment
should be loss of immortality. Well, I found work to do, of all sorts, in
America, and elsewhere. And a year ago--she died. I should have come
straight home, only I was booked for that muddle on the frontier they
called 'a war.' I got fever after Targai; was invalided home; and here I
am recruiting and finishing my book. Now you can understand why
loveliness in a woman, fills me with a sort of panic, even while a part
of me still leaps up instinctively to worship it. I had often said to
myself