did he explain matters to Louise, to whom the very name of his once beautiful sister was anathema. He sent her a wire, however, which said merely, "Called out of town for few days. Probably back Monday."
He had been working very hard, and welcomed a change of scene. He had not been out of England since serving with his regiment in France, and later in Italy, from which campaign he was invalided home shortly before the Armistice. He was now member for a London borough, having given up soldiering for politics. His rather disconcerting honesty and policy of no compromise won him more friends in the former calling than in the latter, and though he had enthusiastic friends he had equally whole-hearted enemies, among whom he began to fear he must number his wife.
The thought of a lifelong companionship with a woman who disliked, or seemed to dislike his every attribute, appalled him. He had a way of reducing problems to their simplest form, and being a clear thinker, saw facts in all their nakedness. Louise was his wife. He had tried to make her happy. She either liked him or she did not. If she did not like him, why live with him? And if she did like him, why not show that she did?
