You cannot think what I have suffered in these last weeks.  I have reasoned with myself, asked myself what did it matter what you did when you were away from me, why should one rival now matter more than those the past has held for me?  I have argued, reasoned, fought with myself, but it is useless.  These unconquerable instincts of jealousy have been placed in us and are as strong as those other instincts of desire that excite them.

“The life of the last few weeks is killing me.  I am losing my health, losing my power to work.  It is the concentration of all my thoughts upon you that is maddening, impossible now that you no longer belong to me.  Even your presence, once the sun of my existence, is painful to me now; and when you come straight from another woman to kiss me, it is agony.  I cannot bear it.

“You thought I did not know all the kisses and caresses you have given Veronica.  Dear Trevor, a woman always knows—­perhaps a man does, too.  Certainly I knew.  One does not have to see or hear; there is a sense, not yet discovered, that is above all the others, that tells us these things.  When you came from her to me you brought with you an influence that killed.  Perhaps it was that you were surrounded with an electricity from her that was hostile to my own.

“I have felt lately a longing to be away from you, a longing to escape from pain and torture, but the music keeps me in town, and we cannot well separate here without a scandal, which I know you would not wish.  So I am going to try and escape mentally from you, though our bodies must occupy the same house for a little while longer.

“I am going to try to interest myself in others, not to think of you, not to care for you as I have done.  We have both been foolish perhaps, as you say, in limiting our lives to each other, let us end the idea between us.  Let us be like ordinary married people.  You are free to choose whatever paths of pleasure open before you, I am the same.  To-night when you come back you will find this letter instead of me.  I shall dine out with one of these men who want me and afterwards spend the evening with him.  I will come back early enough to cause no comment, but I will not come to your room, as I do not suppose you will want me.  I have had another room put ready, and I shall go there.

    “Good-bye, dearest one; if you could know all the agony that has
    gone before this breaking of the tie between us!  Now I seem to
    feel nothing; I am dead.  I can’t cry; can’t think any more.

    “VIOLA.”

* * * * *

I read this letter through with an agonised terror coming over me, that gripped and wrung my heart, through the cloud of amaze that filled me.  Towards the end the words seemed to stab me.  As I came to the conclusion the truth broke upon me in a blinding, lightning flash. I had lost her.  But it was incredible, unthinkable.  She was part of my life, part of myself.  I still lived; therefore, she was mine.  I felt paralysed.  I could not grasp fully what she had said, what she intended me to understand.  It was as when one is told a loved one is dead.  It means nothing to us for a moment.  Reason goes down under a flood of sickening fear.  I read the last page over again.