just as I was gaining it for his wife, as a woman. You didn't need an X-ray machine to see smack through John. He was a good, kind, easy-going sort of chap, with artistic tastes, athletic, physically brave, but morally weak. No doubt if he had ever had to work for his living it might have stiffened his back. But he had been an idler from childhood, with all of his wants provided for, and had always been too lazy to use his opportunities to employ what energy he had. He was the typical dilettante, dabbling at art and sports and science, and never making himself the master of anything, least of all himself. No man with any real stuff in him who was care-free, in robust health, with a fine position, and, most of all—and here something blazed up inside me—such a woman as Edith for his wife, would be sitting, as no doubt he was that moment, guzzling whisky in his smoking-room, to go reeling up a little later to snore drunkenly at his wife's side for the rest of the night. Augh!
It may seem beastly ungrateful of me, my friend, but the idea gave me a sort of hot rage. I felt like going down the stairs and smashing the decanter over his head.
I took up Léontine's letter again. "As far as your half-brother is concerned," she went on, "it does not so much matter. After all, there is a blood tie between you, and blood is thicker than water. Besides, Frank, I have learned a good deal about him from Kharkoff and another man. He is not a very wonderful person. But, for his wife's sake, do you yourself think that you ought to remain one of
