_It is my religion that has done it, Mason. Do you remember that I once told you, when it came to the big things I didn't believe I would dare disobey? I was right in this respect that I can't bring myself to disobey, but it is not so much from fear as I thought it would be. It is a sense of "ought." That is the only way I can put it. I have a feeling, tremendously strong, but hard to define in words, that I ought not, that I must not go on with what we planned._ _This feeling is stronger than I am, Mason. That is all I can say about it._ _So good-bye. May God bless you and make you prosperous and happy in this life and the next one. This is my prayer, my dear._ _Georgia._ The nurse took the letter to the mail box in the office and when she returned, looked at her patient curiously, saying, "Your husband is waiting downstairs to see you." "Do you mind asking him to come up, nurse?" Jim, who had now been in the city for a month, had lost some of his open-air tan and regained a portion of his banished poundage, but still he looked far better than Georgia had seen him for years. He made a favorable impression upon her from the instant he crossed the threshold. He was the Jim of the earlier rather than of the later years of their married life. His aspect seemed to confirm the truth of the revelation which she had received concerning him. "How do you do," she asked formally. "Very well, thank you," he replied. "How do you do?" "Much better--won't you be seated?" Jim, first carefully placing his brown derby hat under the chair, sat where the priest had been the day before. She felt a certain numbness of emotion as she looked at him, but none of that loathing and disgust without which, as she had come to believe, he could not be in her presence. Doubtless, she reflected, she had exaggerated her dislike for Jim, to justify herself for Stevens. "Georgia," said Jim slowly, "I didn't act right before. I know it and I'm sorry and ashamed. It was drink that put the devil in me, same as it will for any man that goes against it hard enough........ Some people can drink in moderation--it doesn't seem to hurt them. But I can't. When I got started I tried to drink up all the whiskey in North Clark Street. Well, it can't be done. I'm onto that now. No more moderate drinking for me. From now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." He paused for a word of encouragement, but she remained silent. A little nodule of memory, which had been lying dormant in her brain, awoke at his words, "from now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." How many times she had heard him say that before--and every time he had thumped his right fist into his left palm, just as he was doing now.