ingle shadow of a chance follow that the petitioner's
plea is therefore going to be granted. No. The Divorce Court may be
cynical, but it's a stickler for proof. The Divorce Court says to the
petitioner, 'It's up to you. Prove it. Never mind what the other side
isn't here to deny. What you've got to do is to satisfy me, to prove to
me that these places and these circumstances were so. Go ahead. Satisfy
me if you can.'

"So I said to myself: now the places and the circumstances of this
petition unquestionably were so. All the Sabres in the world couldn't
deny that. Let his wife go ahead and prove them to the satisfaction of
the Court, if she can. If she can't; good; no harm done that he wasn't
there to be bludgeoned anew. If she can satisfy the court, well, I say
to you, my friend, as I said then to myself, and I say it deliberately:
'If she _can_ satisfy the court--good again, better, excellent. He's
free: he's free from a bond intolerable to both of them.'

"Right. The hearing came on and his wife did satisfy the Court. She got
her decree. He's free.... That's that....

"Yesterday I took my courage in both hands and told him. Yesterday
Ormond Clive said Sabre might be cautiously approached about things. For
three weeks past Clive's not let us--me or that Lady Tybar--see him.
Yesterday we were permitted again; and I took steps to be there first. I
told him. There was one thing I'd rather prayed for to help me in the
telling, and it came off--he didn't remember! He'd come out of that
place where he had been with only a confused recollection of all that
had happened to him before he went in. Like a fearful nightmare that in
the morning one remembers only vaguely and in bits. Vaguely and in bits
he remembered the inquest horror, and vaguely and in bits he remembered
the divorce matter--and he thought the one was as much over as the
other. He thought he had been divorced. I said to him, taking it as the
easiest way of breaking my news, I said to him, 'You know your wife's
divorced you, old man?' He said painfully, 'Yes, I know. I remember
that.'

"I could have stood on my head and waved my heels with relief and joy.
Of course it will come back to him in time that the business hadn't
happened before his illness. In time he'll begin to grope after detailed
recollection, and he'll begin to realise that he never did go through it
and that it must have happened while he was ill. Well, I don't funk
that. That won't happen yet