had been the beginning of her disillusionment, the disillusionment which has come to more than one English girl during the first twelve months of married life in an Indian bungalow.

Then, perforce, the gap had widened, and six months later had become a chasm quite impassable except in the interests of social propriety. Anglo-Indian society is notable for divorces, and poor Moreen very early in her married life fully understood the reason.

She held the letter to the dim light and read it[74] again attentively. Allowing a certain discount for her mother’s changeless animosity towards Major Fayne, it yet remained a startling letter. Much of it consisted in feckless condolences, characteristic but foolish; the passage, however, which she read and re-read by the dim, flickering light was as follows:

[74]

“Mr. Harringay in his last letter begged of me to come out by the next boat to Rangoon,” her mother wrote. “He has quite opened my eyes to the truth, Moreen, not in such a way as to shock me all at once, but gradually. I always distrusted Ralph Fayne and never disguised the fact from you. I knew that his previous life had been far from irreproachable, but his treatment of you surpasses even my expectations. I know all, my poor darling! and I know something which you do not know. His father did not die in Colombo at all; he died in a madhouse! and there are two other known dipsomaniacs in Ralph Fayne’s family——”

A hand reached over Moreen’s shoulder and tore the letter from her.

She turned with a cry—and looked up into her husband’s quivering face! For a moment he stood over her, his left fist clenching and unclenching[75] and his pale blue eyes glassy with anger. Then chokingly he spoke:

[75]

“So you carry one of his letters about with you?”

The veins were throbbing visibly upon his temples. Moreen clutched at the blanket but did not speak, dared not move, for if ever she had looked into the face of a madman it was at this moment when she looked into the face of Ralph Fayne.

He suddenly grabbed the candle and, holding it close to the letter, began to read. His hands were perfectly steady, showing the tremendous nerve tension under which he laboured. Then his expression changed, but nothing of the maniac glare left his eyes.

“From your 

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