s shining full on the old bureau and a vase of tulips
standing there, giving those flowers colour that was not colour, and an
unnamed look, as if they came from a world which no human enters. It
glinted on a bronze bust of old Voltaire, which she had bought him for a
Christmas present, so that the great writer seemed to be smiling from the
hollows of his eyes. Gyp turned the bust a little, to catch the light on
its far cheek; a letter was disclosed between it and the oak. She drew
it out thinking: 'Bless him! He uses everything for paper-weights'; and,
in the strange light, its first words caught her eyes:

"DEAR BRYAN,

"But I say--you ARE wasting yourself--"

She laid it down, methodically pushing it back under the bust. Perhaps he
had put it there on purpose! She got up and went to the window, to check
the temptation to read the rest of that letter and see from whom it was.
No! She did not admit that she was tempted. One did not read letters.
Then the full import of those few words struck into her: "Dear Bryan.
But I say--you ARE wasting yourself." A letter in a chain of
correspondence, then! A woman's hand; but not his mother's, nor his
sisters'--she knew their writings. Who had dared to say he was wasting
himself? A letter in a chain of letters! An intimate correspondent,
whose name she did not know, because--he had not told her! Wasting
himself--on what?--on his life with her down here? And was he? Had she
herself not said that very night that he had lost his laugh? She began
searching her memory. Yes, last Christmas vacation--that clear, cold,
wonderful fortnight in Florence, he had been full of fun. It was May
now. Was there no memory since--of his old infectious gaiety? She could
not think of any. "But I say--you ARE wasting yourself." A sudden
hatred flared up in her against the unknown woman who had said that
thing--and fever, running through her veins, made her ears burn. She
longed to snatch forth and tear to pieces the letter, with its
guardianship of which that bust seemed mocking her; and she turned away
with the thought: 'I'll go and meet him; I can't wait here.'

Throwing on a cloak she walked out into the moonlit garden, and went
slowly down the whitened road toward the station. A magical, dewless
night! The moonbeams had stolen in to the beech clump, frosting the
boles and boughs, casting a fine ghostly grey over the shadow-patterned
beech-mast. Gyp took the short cut thro