he meals cooked there and eaten
there, Denasia's attempts at housekeeping--the whole series of
memories made him wince and shiver with shame and annoyance. "Thank
God it is over!" he said fervently. And he never once thought what an
insult he was offering to eternal mercy and justice, in supposing God
had anything whatever to do with his flagrant desertion of duty, his
shameful abrogation of all the consequences of his own wilful
selfishness, and his cruel farewell to the wife and son he was bound
to nourish and cherish and defend.

He thought of none of these things. He thought only of the comfort and
elegance; the peace, the delicate living, the delicate clothing, the
congenial companionship he was going to. He was determined to have a
luxurious bath, to be shaved and perfumed, to leave behind him the
very dust of his past life. He resolved not to allow himself to
remember Denasia. She was to be as if she never had been. He would
blot out of his memory all the years she had brightened and darkened.
And if any excuse can be found for him, it must be in his supposition
that Denasia felt just as he did. She would be grateful to him for
taking the initiative--glad to get back to her home and her people,
glad to escape a life for which she must have discovered she had
neither strength nor vocation.

So he thought, in spite of his resolve not to think. But a man must be
even more selfish and reckless than Roland was to take years of his
past life and plunge them into oblivion as he would plunge a stone
into mid-ocean. In spite of the novelty of his situation, of his
delight with his quiet, handsome room, the thought of Denasia would
enter where it was forbidden to enter, and he could not help wondering
how she would receive his letter, and what steps she would take in
consequence of it.

Denasia came home weary and disappointed. She had had a long, silent
wait for the person she expected to see, and finally been compelled to
accept the fact that he was not coming into town. She was heart-sick,
and the paltry loss of the car fare was an addition to her anxiety.
That the room was empty and the baby crying did not in any way
astonish her. She understood from it that Roland had come home and
dismissed the landlady, and then wearied of his watch and gone out
again, leaving the child to sleep or to weep as it felt inclined to
do. Her first action was to lift it from its bed, nurse and comfort
it, and rock it to sleep on her b