I can see now how she was plotting and scheming and
poisoning my wife's mind against me, but I was such a blind
beetle that I could not understand it at the time. Then I broke
my blue ribbon and began to drink again, but I think I should not
have done it if Mary had been the same as ever. She had some
reason to be disgusted with me now, and the gap between us began
to be wider and wider. And then this Alec Fairbairn chipped in,
and things became a thousand times blacker.
"'It was to see Sarah that he came to my house first, but soon it
was to see us, for he was a man with winning ways, and he made
friends wherever he went. He was a dashing, swaggering chap,
smart and curled, who had seen half the world and could talk of
what he had seen. He was good company, I won't deny it, and he
had wonderful polite ways with him for a sailor man, so that I
think there must have been a time when he knew more of the poop
than the forecastle. For a month he was in and out of my house,
and never once did it cross my mind that harm might come of his
soft, tricky ways. And then at last something made me suspect,
and from that day my peace was gone forever.
"'It was only a little thing, too. I had come into the parlour
unexpected, and as I walked in at the door I saw a light of
welcome on my wife's face. But as she saw who it was it faded
again, and she turned away with a look of disappointment. That
was enough for me. There was no one but Alec Fairbairn whose
step she could have mistaken for mine.
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