A suffocating feeling of anger against her raged through me.  The sight of the bed where she had so lately lain beside me filled me with a resentful agony.  She had gone from me while I slept.  To me, in those first blind moments of rage, it seemed like the most cruel treachery.

After a minute I grew calm enough to tear open the note and read it.

* * * * *

    “My very dearest one,

    “Forgive me.  This is the first time I have disobeyed you in
    anything in all the time we have been together And now [Greek: 
    baino. to gar chren mou te kai theon kratei....]

“I must go from you, and you yourself will see in the future the necessity that is ruling me now.  Do not try to find me or follow me, as I cannot return to you yet.  Do believe in me and trust me and let me return to you at the end of this miserable year which stretches before me now a desert of ashes and which seems as if it would never pass over, as if it would stretch into Eternity.  But my reason tells me that it will pass, and then I shall come back to you and all my joy in life; for there is no joy anywhere in this world for me except with you—­if you will let me come back.

    “No one will know where I am.  I shall see no one we know.  Say what
    you wish about me to the world.

“Don’t think I do not know how you will suffer at first; but you would have suffered more if I had stayed.  While I am away from you, think of your life as entirely your own; do not hesitate to go to Suzee, if you wish.  I feel somehow that Fate has designed you for me, not for her, and that she will not hold you for long, but that, whatever happens, you will always remember

    “VIOLA.”

* * * * *

I crushed this letter in my hand in a fury of rage when I had read it, and threw it from me.  Anger against her, red anger in which I could have killed her, if I could in those moments have followed and found her, swept over me.

I looked round the room mechanically.  She had dressed in the clothes she had been wearing yesterday apparently, and taken one small handbag, for I missed that from where it had stood on a chest of drawers.

Her other luggage was there undisturbed.  I saw her evening and other dresses hanging in the half-open wardrobe opposite me.

The only thing that had gone from the toilet-table was the little frame with my photo in it.

A sickening sense of loss, of despair came over me, mingling with the savage anger and hatred surging within me.

After a time I rose from my chair and began to dress.

I had made up my mind as to my own actions.  To stay here without Viola, where the whole place spoke to me of her, was impossible.  As soon as I could get everything packed I would go up to London and stay at my club.  She would not come back.