If this was to be the end she must know it.

Uncertainty was not to be endured any longer.

All her sleepless nights and fluctuations of hope and despair had marked her, perhaps for life.

Hers was not the easily blown away infatuation of a debutante, the mere summer love of a young girl.

It was the steady and devoted love of a wife, ready to make sacrifices, to forgive inconstancies, to make allowances for temporary aberrations and, when necessary, to nurse back to sanity, without one word or look of reproach, the husband who had slipped into delinquency.