rusquely, 'I suppose they are.'

'You mean that you have preserved letters which, as often as you open
that drawer, remind you of someone else?--that you purposely keep them
so near your hand?'

'Beatrice, I had no right to destroy them.'

'No right!' Her eyes flashed, and her tongue trembled with its scorn.
'You mean you had no wish.'

'If I had no right, I could scarcely have the wish.'

Wilfrid was amazed at his own contemptible quibbling, but in truth he
was not equal to the occasion. He could not defend himself in choice
phrases; in a sort of desperate carelessness he flung out the first
retort that offered itself. He was on the point of throwing over
everything, of declaring that all must be at an end between them; yet
courage failed for that. Nor courage only; the woman before him was very
grand in her indignation, her pale face was surpassingly beautiful. The
past faded in comparison with her; in his heart he doubted of its power.

Beatrice was gazing at him in resentful wonder.

'Why have you done this?' she asked. 'Why did you come to me and speak
those words? What necessity was there to pretend what you did not feel?'

He met her eyes.

'I have not spoken falsely to you,' he said, with calmness which did not
strengthen the impression his words were meant to convey.

'When you said that you loved me? If it were true, you could not have
borne to have those letters under your eyes. You say you had no right to
destroy them. You knew that it was your duty to do so. _Could_ you have
kept them?'

Wilfrid had become almost absent-minded. His heart was torn in two ways.
He wished to take the letters from their case and destroy them at once;
probably it was masculine pride which now kept him from doing it.

'I think you must believe what I say, Beatrice,' was his answer. 'I am
not capable of deliberately lying to you.'

'You are not. But you are capable of deceiving yourself; I accuse you of
nothing more. You have deceived yourself, and I have been the cause of
it; for I had so little of woman's pride that I let you see my love; it
was as if I begged for your love in return. My own heart should have
taught me better; there can be no second love. You pitied me!'

Wilfrid was in no state of mind to weigh phrases; at a later time, when
he could look back with calmness, and with the advantage of extended
knowledge, he recognised in these words the uttermost confession of love
of 'which a woman is capable. I