"Most comfortable, and so very clean--quite spotless," the wife answered
admiringly, and yet drearily. It made her feel humiliated that her man
could live this narrow life of one room without despair, with sufficient
resistance to the lure of her hundred and fifty thousand pounds and her
own delicate and charming person. Here, it would seem, he was content.
One easy-chair, made out of a barrel, a couch, a bed--a very narrow bed,
like a soldier's, a bed for himself alone--a small table, a shelf on the
wall with a dozen books, a little table, a bureau, and an old-fashioned,
sloping-topped, shallow desk covered with green baize, on high legs, so
that like a soldier too he could stand as he wrote (Crozier had made that
high stand for the desk himself). That was what the room conveyed to
her--the spirit of the soldier, bare, clean, strong, sparse: a workshop
and a chamber of sleep in one, like the tent of an officer on the march.
After the feeling had come to her, to heighten the sensation she espied a
little card hung under the small mirror on the wall. There was writing
on it, and going nearer, she saw in red pencil the words, "Courage,
soldier!"

These were the words which Kitty was so fond of using, and the girl had
a thrill of triumph now as she saw the woman from whom Crozier had fled
looking at the card. She herself had come and looked at it many times
since Crozier had gone, for he had only put it there just before he left
on his last expedition to Aspen Vale to carry through his deal. It had
brought a great joy to Kitty's heart. It had made her feel that she had
some share in his life; that, in a way, she had helped him on the march,
the vivandiere who carried the water-bag which would give him drink when
parched, battle-worn, or wounded.

Mona Crozier turned away from the card, sadly reflecting that nothing in