David being David, he sat up all night, submitting to his cure for temperament. He was facing the truth from which he had been hiding ever since Shirley went away. His heavy sense of loss had been defined. A little imp with a nasty sneering voice that jabbed like a hot needle perched itself on his shoulder and kept dinning into his ears: "The truth is, you had nothing to lose but a fancy. Shirley never really loved you. You were only one of her toys, one sort of a good time, and not worth the price. You didn't really love Shirley, only what you thought she was, what you see now she is not. Therefore . . ." CHAPTER VII SANCTUARY Some men fall out of love with their wives as easily and unconcernedly as they fell in. They even feel a sort of relief, thinking a disturbing factor thus removed from their lives, and they live happily ever after. But they are not "temperamental." It was not so with David. He thought it a tragedy, at least for a while. Even when it had failed him, when it had refused to shine in darkness, itself turned upon him in an hour of need, he had not lost faith in love. He had said in his heart, "At least I have love left, which is worth while in itself; and having that, I can yet work out some sort of happiness for us all." He had clung desperately to that hope, though the evidence was against it. He had been clinging to an illusion. When he found that out, he had nothing left. He was bewildered by the task of working out a happiness where no love was. How could he rebuild when he had not even wreckage with which to build? He went to live at the boarding-house where he had been taking his meals, a dingy cheerless establishment that had but the one merit of cheapness. He spent his evenings there alone, smoking too much, reading or working for Dick Holden. The cheap tobacco burned his tongue and the loneliness, more than ever, ate into his soul. He thought of going out to call on the Jim Blaisdells or for dinners with the men he had used to know. But he shrank from that because he supposed his old friends must be saying, "That David Quentin--poor Davy!--has quite petered out, hasn't he?" As probably they were. He had sense enough to understand that these nights were not good for him. "As far as I know, I've got to exist a good many years yet and make a living for myself and Shirley and Davy Junior. So I mustn't let myself get into this sort of a rut. I must hunt up a more cheerful place to stay." When a love is dead, it is dead, and there's an end to it. After a decent period of mourning you get used to the fact. . . .