He wrote in apparently excellent spirits. He had had an extraordinary
piece of luck, he said, and had been offered a very good post in Burmah.
If she would consent to go out to him, they could be married at once.
That letter Evelyn read during a solitary ramble over a wide Yorkshire
moor, and when she looked up from the boy's signature her expression was
hunted, even tragic.
Jim had carefully considered ways and means. The thing she had longed
for was within her grasp. All she had ever asked for herself was flung
to her without stint.
But--what had happened to her? she wondered vaguely--she realised it all
fully, completely, yet with no thrill of gladness. Something subtly
potent seemed wound about her heart, holding her back; something that
was stronger far than the thought of Jim was calling to her, crying
aloud across the barren deserts of her soul. And in that moment she knew
that her marriage with Jim had become a final impossibility, and that it
was imperative upon her to write at once and tell him so.
She walked miles that day, and returned at length utterly wearied in
body and mind. She was facing the hardest problem of her life.
Not till after midnight was her letter to Jim finished, and even then
she could not rest. Had she utterly ruined the boy's life? she wondered,
as she sealed and directed her crude, piteous appeal for freedom.
When the morning light came grey through her window she was still poring
above a blank sheet of notepaper.
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