“Pleasant voyage--and good luck to you both!” he said, cheerfully, and closed the door. He stood for a moment listening to their happy voices as they went out of the building and then turned to find his wife standing by his side.
“Jack!” she cried, and her eyes searched his face as if to read acknowledged partnership in a crime. “He’s gone?”
“Gone, right enough--and he’ll get his legacy. I can trace him quite easily now we know the name of his boat. That gives us a clear conscience.”
“Does it, Jack?--Does it?--Oh, I wish I could be sure!--Durham is not the man Tremaine was!”
“He’s a happier man than Tremaine would be, anyway! Think of their delight when they get that legacy!” He led her back into the dining-room, where the remains of their anniversary feast were yet upon the table. “And, dear!” he looked into her eyes, “we are happier people than we should have been had Durham not replaced Tremaine!”
“He goes a long way off, into a new environment. The chances are against his remembering at all. If he does,” he shrugged his shoulders, “he will probably himself put it down as a hallucination from which his devoted little wife will nurse him back. Don’t worry, my dear. We did the right thing.”
“If only I could be sure!” she said, with a sigh.
The next morning Dorothy woke up to see her mother bending over her bed.
“Dada?” said Mrs. Satterthwaite, as though she did not understand.
“Yes,” said the child. “Dada--Dada who came back last night!”
“You dreamed it, dear,” she said. “Dada was killed in the war.”
He opened the door into darkness and fumbled for the switch. The spacious, beautifully furnished living-room of the flat--long, dark bookcase filled with mellowed leather bindings; large, soft bearskins compensating for the insufficiency of the delicate Persian carpet on the parquet floor; a few precious prints spaced with an exquisite reticence upon the walls; an Oriental bibelot here and there emphasizing the quiet charm of English eighteenth-century furniture with its touch of the cunningly grotesque; two great leather-covered chairs by the fireside--was suffused with soft light.
He stood in the doorway--tall, lean, handsome, forceful with a touch of asceticism--and smiled to the corridor.