d--by George!--the lost
one!--among the others. He opened it eagerly, ran it through. Yes, the
very thing! What luck! He laid it carefully aside a moment on a trunk
near by, and sat with the other letters on his lap.

His fingers played with them. He almost determined to take them down
unopened, and burn them, as they were, in his own room; but in the end
he could not resist the temptation to look at them once more. He pulled
off an india-rubber band from the latest packet, and was soon deep in
them, at first half ashamed, half contemptuous. Calf love, of course!
And he had been a precious fool to write such things. Then, presently,
the headlong passion of them began to affect him, to set his pulses
swinging. He fell to wondering at his own bygone facility, his own
powers of expression. How did he ever write such a style! He, who could
hardly get through a note now without blots and labour. Self-pity grew
upon him, and self-admiration. By heaven! How could a woman treat a
man--a man who could write to her like this--as Chloe had treated him!

The old smart revived; or rather, the old indelible impressions of it
left on nerve and brain.

The letters lay on his knee. He sat brooding: his hands upon the
packets, his head bowed. One might have thought him a man overcome and
dissolved by the enervating memories of passion; but in truth, he was
gradually and steadily reacting against them; resuming, and this time
finally, as far as Chloe Fairmile was concerned, a man's mastery of
himself. He thought of her unkindness and cruelty--of the misery he had
suffered--and now of the reckless caprice with which, during the
preceding weeks, she had tried to entangle him afresh, with no respect
for his married life, for his own or Daphne's peace of mind.

He judged her, and therewith, himself. Looking back upon the four years
since Chloe Fairmile had thrown him over, it seemed to him that, in some
ways, he had made a good job of his life, and, in others, a bad one. As
to the money, that was neither here nor there. It had been amusing to
have so much of it; though of late Daphne's constant reminders that the
fortune was hers and not his, had been like grit in the mouth. But he
did not find that boundless wealth had made as much difference to him as
he had expected. On the other hand, he had been much happier with Daphne
than he had thought he should be, up to the time of their coming to
Heston. She wasn't easy to live with, and she ha