before and who, besides, had been dead and yet who had been the one of whom David never wanted to think—he felt that that man was drawing his wife away.
David Herrick's wife but also Sam Bolton's; for Bolton had possessed her; he not merely had cooked one camp supper with her; he had been her husband and made her happy for eleven days, so happy that, after she had left him, she almost returned to Bolton; almost, but not quite. Now she would go back to him.
David said, "This is why I stayed away from you, Fidelia. I went from Rock Island early in the morning to Itanaca. I found my mother very sick."
"Why, David! Why, David, what was the matter?"
"I couldn't find out at once; that was one of the reasons I had to stay. It wasn't the sort of a sickness a person admits, Fidelia. I'm not telling you this to have you pity me. I don't want pity, Fidelia; but I won't have you have any wrong idea about what I meant by staying away. I found my mother dying."
"Oh, David, she's—dead?"
He shook his head. "They give her a year, Fidelia." And he told her the trouble.
"Oh, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you send for me?"
He thought, "If I had, she'd not have got that letter. It would be lying in the post office without power over her."
"I couldn't send for you," he said. "No one else knows the truth but the doctor and mother and me
