II
"GARDEN OF RED FLOWERS"
Imszanski was patient and persevering, and determined to take no repulse as final. In the end he had the good luck to come at the right time, when Martha was in a favourable mood: whereupon she relented, gave up all her objections, and married him very willingly.
For close on a year after their marriage, I had no sight of them. They were travelling about Europe, and Martha had never been abroad. Every two or three days I would get a post-card from her, which I of course "read between the lines." Plunged though she was in an atmosphere of intense bliss, she was continually revolving the thought of death in her mind. But that is probably no unfrequent phenomenon in such cases.
She returned, bringing with her a son a few months of age—returned very pale, and like
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