income, support in old age, the strands in the bond that held him,
the bond that holds us all, had been untwisting, untwisting, from
the third of June to the fifteenth. The strand that stood for Dora
doubtless was the last to break, but it did not detract from my
beatitude to know that even this consideration, before the Dupleix
and liberty, failed to hold.

I kept out of Miss Harris's way so studiously for the next week or
two that she was kind enough in the end to feel compelled to send
for me. I went with misgivings--I expected, as may be imagined, to
be very deeply distressed. She met me with a storm of gay
reproaches. I had never seen her in better health or spirits. My
surprise must have been more evident than I supposed or intended,
for before I went away she told me the whole story. By that time
she had heard from Ceylon, a delicious letter with a pen-and-ink
sketch at the top. I have it still; it infallibly brought the man
back to me. But it was all over; she assured me with shining eyes
that it was. The reason of her plainly boundless thankfulness that
Armour had run away from the School of Art did not come to the
surface until I was just going. Then I gathered that if he had
taken the post she would have felt compelled, compelled by all she
had done for him, to share its honours with him; and this, ever
since at her bidding he had begun to gather such things up, was
precisely what she had lost all inclination to do.

We were married the following October. We had a big, gorgeous
official wedding, which we both enjoyed enormously. I took
furlough, and we went home, but we found London very expensive and
the country very slow; and with my K.C.S.I. came the offer of the
Membership, so we went back to Simla for three perfectly unnecessary