Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/211

 The reading rather bored him, but he submitted amiably enough.

"All right," he would say resignedly. "Let's hear what the poor simp did, after he let his wife up and leave him."

But he would drop off to sleep very soon. He had lived in a hard school, and the fetich of the printed word was not for him. However, if he roused and she was not in sight he was restless until she returned.

"Seems to me you're eating right hearty these days!"

"I have to walk two blocks to eat at all."

But over his injury and its cause he preserved a silence even to her. Sometimes she would look up from her book to see him staring at the ceiling, with a strange concentration that almost frightened her, and with his fists clenched.

It was a queer life for Kay. Her romance had got about, and well-intentioned nurses invented errands to get a look at her. And one day a very curious thing happened. A man down the hall said he knew her, and would be grateful if she would stop in and see him. It was Ronald Osborne. She hardly knew him at first, the dapper little man who used to pose for the benefit of the servants, and even now was smoothing his hair with one thin hand.

"Hello, Kay."

"Hello, Uncle Ronald. I didn't—have you been very I?"

"Not very," he said. "Not very. So you've decided to live your own life after all, Kay! You got away from them, eh?"

"I'm afraid I've hurt them all pretty badly."

"Not you," he said. "They're thick-skinned. Look at your Aunt Bessie!" He laughed a little, horribly. "Your mother's different, but she hadn't your courage. She never did get away."

She went back again a day or two later, forcing herself rather because she had never liked him. But the bed was neatly made and empty, and she learned that Uncle Ronald had himself "got away" the night before, quite comfortably and without pain.