exaltation of this
thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.

He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she had
written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had led up to
this.

The vagrant's farewell document had done the business. True to his fatal
gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished without
showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton those
colours were made plain. Antonia had felt her lover was a traitor.
Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision, Shelton knew that
this was true.

"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-" That woman! "It
was as if you were on her side!"

He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive perception of
that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its instinct for
self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those without that
instinct. And she had written these words considering herself bound to
him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies, of untidiness of
principle! Here was the answer to the question he had asked all day:
"How have things come to such a pass?" and he began to feel compassion
for her.

Poor child! She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in the
word! Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented him and
thrown him over. No lady did these things! They were impossible! At
the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious sympathy with, this
impossibility.

Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with fresh
meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first sensation of
relief detached itself and grew in force. In that letter there was
something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a separate point of
view. It was like a finger pointed at him as an unsound person. In
marrying her he would be marrying not only her, but her class--his class.
She would be there always to make him look on her and on himself, and all
the people that they knew and all the things they did, complacently; she
would be there to make him feel himself superior to everyone whose life
was cast in other moral moulds. To feel himself superior, not blatantly,
not consciously, but with subconscious righteousness.

But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had made
him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority," struck
him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.