e door
swung to behind her.

She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man she most
dreaded--her husband. He had waited behind the door till she entered,
and had then pushed it to, and was leaning against it.

"Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now? It's me." He
pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the door, sat back in it
slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment of her terror that was worse
than any form of intimidation. "What do you want to be scared for? I'm a
lamb. You might stroke me! This here's a civility call. For to thank you
for your letter, Polly Daverill."

She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. She could
only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing what she had said in
her letter. "I wrote it for your own sake, Daverill," said she
deprecatingly, timidly. "What I said about the Police was true."

"Can't foller that. Say it again!"

"They _had_ put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They may be there
now. But I'd made my mind up you should not be taken along of me, so I
wrote the letter."

"Then what the Hell...!" His face set angrily, as he searched a pocket.
The sunken line that followed that twist in his jaw grew deeper, and the
scar on his knitted forehead told out smooth and white, against its
reddening furrows. He found what he sought--her letter, which she
recognised--and opened it before he finished his speech. "What the
Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of _this_?" He read it in a vicious
undertone, biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her.

She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than ever. It
cost her a gasping effort to say:--"You are reading it wrong! Do give an
eye to the words, Daverill."

"Read it yourself," he retorted, and threw the letter across the table.

She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed stare, rigid
with astonishment. "I never wrote it so," said she at last.

"Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is? Answer me to that, Polly
Daverill."

Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress proportionate. "I never
wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it true and solemn I never did.
What I wrote was for you to keep away, and I made the words according.
I can't say no other, if I was to die for it."

"None of your snivelling! How came it like it is?--that's the point!
Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill-chosen adjective for the
letter as he po