Then one day a brief paragraph
announced his death--"one of the last victims of the pestilence he
had so successfully combated."
That evening, at my club, I heard men talking of him. One said:
"What's the use of a fellow wasting himself on a lot of savages?"
and another wiseacre opined: "Oh, he went off because there was
friction at home. A fellow like that, who knew the East, would have
got through all right if he'd taken the proper precautions. I saw
him before he left, and I never saw a man look less as if he wanted
to live."
I turned on the last speaker, and my voice made him drop his lighted
cigar on his complacent knuckles.
"I never knew a man," I exclaimed, "who had better reasons for
wanting to live!"
A handsome youth mused: "Yes, his wife is very beautiful--but it
doesn't follow--"
And then some one nudged him, for they knew I was Halidon's friend.
THE PRETEXT
I
MRS. RANSOM, when the front door had closed on her visitor, passed
with a spring from the drawing-room to the narrow hall, and thence
up the narrow stairs to her bedroom.
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