‘Then, one day, Monkey-faced Ritchie called on that sweet, shy, Mrs Davidson. She had come out under his care and he considered himself a privileged person—her oldest friend in the tropics. He posed for a great admirer of hers. He was always a great chatterer. He had got hold of the story rather vaguely, and he started chattering on that subject, thinking she knew all about it. And in due course he let out something about Laughing Anne.

‘ “Laughing Anne,” said Mrs Davidson with a start. “What’s that?”

‘Ritchie plunged into circumlocution at once, but she very soon stopped him. “Is that creature dead?” she asked.

‘ “I believe so,” stammered Ritchie. “Your husband says so.”

‘ “But you don’t know for certain?”

‘ “No! How could I, Mrs Davidson.”

‘ “That’s all I wanted to know,” said she, and went out of the room.

‘When Davidson came home she was ready to go for him, not with common voluble indignation, but as if trickling a stream of cold water down his back. She talked of his base intrigue with a vile woman, of being made a fool of, of the insult to her dignity.…

‘Davidson begged her to listen to him and told her all the story, thinking that it would move a heart of stone. He tried to make her understand his remorse. She heard him to the end, said “Indeed!” and turned her back on him.

‘Davidson’s home after this was like a frozen hell for him. A stupid woman with a sense of grievance is worse than an unchained devil. He sent the boy to the White Fathers in Malacca.^* This was not a very expensive sort of education, but she could not forgive him for not casting the offensive child away utterly. She worked up her sense of her wifely wrongs and of her injured purity to such a pitch that one day, when poor Davidson was pleading with her to be reasonable and not to make an impossible existence for them both, she turned on him in a chill passion and told him that his very sight was odious to her.

‘Davidson, with scrupulous delicacy, was not the man to assert his rights over a woman who could not bear the sight of him. He bowed his head; and shortly afterward he arranged for her to go to her people. That was what she wanted in her outraged dignity. And then she had always disliked the tropics and had detested secretly the people she had to live among as Davidson’s wife. She took her pure, sensitive, mean little soul away to Fremantle^* or somewhere in that direction. And of course the little girl went away with her too. What could poor Davidson have done with a little girl on his hands, even if she had consented to leave her with him, which is unthinkable.

‘This is the story which has spoiled Davidson’s smile for him—which perhaps it wouldn’t have done so thoroughly had he been less of a good fellow.’

Hollis ceased. But before we rose from the table I asked him if he knew what had become of Laughing Anne’s boy.

He counted carefully the change handed him by the China-man waiter and raised his head.

‘Oh! yes. That’s the finishing touch. He was a bright, taking little chap, as you know, and the Fathers took very special pains with his bringing up. Davidson expected in his heart to have some comfort out of him. In his placid way he’s a man who needs affection. Well, Tony has grown into a fine youth—but there you are! He wants to be a priest; he wants to work as a missionary. The Fathers assure Davidson that it is a serious vocation. They tell him he has a special disposition for mission work, too. So Laughing Anne’s boy will lead a saintly life in China somewhere; he may even become a martyr; but poor Davidson