Man and Wife

I

On a summer’s morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship, bound outward, from Gravesend to Bombay.

They were both of the same age⁠—eighteen. They had both, from childhood upward, been close and dear friends at the same school. They were now parting for the first time⁠—and parting, it might be, for life.

The name of one was Blanche. The name of the other was Anne.