d to
take three turns between the window and the wall before he could read;
then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the paper, he
began:

I was wrong to ask you to go away. I see now that it was breaking my
promise, and I did n't mean to do that. I don't know why things have
come to be so different. You never think as I do about anything.

I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to mother
was impudent. Of course you did n't know what was in it; but when
Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt that you
believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't understand it.
And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse, it was all as
if you were on her side. How can you feel like that?

I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to go
away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I should
feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me. I was awake
all last night, and have a bad headache this morning. I can't write any
more. ANTONIA.

His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in it
an element of anger. He was reprieved! She would not break her promise;
she considered herself bound! In the midst of the 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.