I never saw such perseverance and belief.
He made excuse after excuse for her. He was too proud to write again,
and he got leaner and leaner and more and more homesick. You know that
collision I spoke of? Well, he got in that by waiting over a steamer
at Nagasaki in the hope of getting a letter before he left Japan."
"What happened next?" asked Gerald; "did another planet swim into his
ken?"
"Hardly. The smash came just before I left him, a couple of months
ago. We were at Raffles Hotel in Singapore having tea with some French
girls from the steamer. Our purser happened along and gave Don a
letter which I recognized as being from Mrs. Sequin. He read the first
sheet, then looked up in a wild sort of way, and asked if we'd mind
excusing him as he had something he wanted to see to before the
steamer sailed. At five o'clock he'd never shown up, and I had to
hustle our bags ashore and start out to look for him. He'd been
awfully seedy for a couple of months and when he got left I knew
something serious had happened. I found him late that night in the
foreign hospital out of his head with a fever. It seems the letter had
told him that his girl was going to be married, and half beside
himself he had gotten into a rikisha, and ridden for hours in the
tropical sun, trying to face the fact.
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