fe, and load my
own with endless self-reproach. I find that even mere outward
circumstances would not allow of what for a moment we dreamt might be
possible, and of that I am _glad_, since it helps me to overcome the
terrible temptation. Oh, if you knew how that temptation'--etc. 'Time
will be a friend to both of us, dearest Monica. Forget each other we
never can, we _never_ will. But our unsullied love'--etc.

Monica read it through again, the long rigmarole. Since the day that
she received it--addressed to 'Mrs. Williamson' at the little
stationer's by Lavender Hill--the day before she consented to accompany
her sister into new lodgings--the letter had lain in its hiding-place.
Alone this afternoon, for Virginia was gone to call on Miss Nunn, alone
and miserable, every printed page a weariness to her sight, she took
out the French-stamped envelope and tried to think that its contents
interested her. But not a word had power of attraction or of repulsion.
The tender phrases affected her no more than if they had been addressed
to a stranger. Love was become a meaningless word. She could not
understand how she had ever drifted into such relations with the
writer. Fear and anger were the sole passions surviving in her memory
from those days which had violently transformed her life, and it was
not with Bevis, but her husband, that these emotions were connected.
Bevis's image stood in that already distant past like a lay figure, the
mere semblance of a man. And with such conception of him his letter
corresponded; it was artificial, lifeless, as if extracted from some
vapid novel.

But she must no destroy it. Its use was still to come. Letter and
envelope must go back again into hiding, and await the day which would
give them power over human lives.

Suffering, as always, from headache and lassitude, she sat by the
window and watched the people who passed along--her daily occupation.
This sitting-room was on the ground floor. In a room above some one was
receiving a music lesson; every now and then the teacher's voice became
audible, raised in sharp impatience, and generally accompanied by a
clash upon the keys of the piano. At the area gate of the house
opposite a servant was talking angrily with a tradesman's errand boy,
who at length put his thumb to his nose with insulting significance and
scampered off. Then, at the house next to that one, there stopped a
cab, from which three busy-looking men alighted. Cabs full of