Fever had reduced me to the last thin edge of existence. As I stretched out my arms before me, they looked like some grim ghastly stranger's, I did not recognise them. No, she should come back to me when I had regained the full glory of my health and strength that I knew she delighted in.
So I waited with all the patience I could command, and sleep and Nature nursed me between them till I was quite well.
Then came long-drawn-out procedure in the Mexican courts. I had documents to write and sign, affidavits to make out, interrogations to answer; but finally the Law was satisfied. I was acquitted. I heard the decision with a curious feeling. How little it seemed to matter beside the inner knowledge of my heart, that Hop Lee himself had been with me, and knew and understood.
One afternoon then, after the satisfying of nearly endless claims upon me, I looked at the long, flat, rolling sea with its reefs of palms for the last time, and took the train northwards away from Tampico.
The year was not yet over, but I was going back to be in London, or very near it. For would she not write first to my club? and here it took at least three weeks for my letters sent on from the club to reach me.
I did not wish to live actually in town yet till Viola joined me, to advertise our separation, unnecessarily, to our friends, but I thought I would live practically hidden somewhere near, so that letters could reach me from London the same day.
Within a month I was back in London and went first of all to call for letters. Amongst them I recognised instantly there was not one from Viola. And, depressed and disappointed, I went down into the country, to work.
Work, the dear mistress of an artist's life, the one that never leaves him but is there always waiting to receive him back to her, to console him in her arms for all the wounds that love has made.
Month after month went by and I worked at the painting, turning into finished pictures the many sketches life with Suzee had given me.
As I worked on some of these a wave of sad reflection would sweep over me, of memory of her, but the recollection of the deceit and lies in which her love for me had been always cloaked came with that memory and blunted the poignant edge of it.