Helen was sorely tempted for a moment to burn it unread.  She had suffered so much through a former letter in that handwriting.  She suddenly realised how cruelly Aubrey’s words about Ronnie had, in the light of Ronnie’s subsequent behaviour, eaten into her soul.

She looked at the fire.  She rose and moved towards it, the letter in her hand.

Then better counsels prevailed.

She went slowly upstairs to her sitting-room, closed the door, sat down, and opened Aubrey’s letter.

It contained a smaller envelope sealed, on which was written:  “Read letter first.”

She opened the folded sheets.

“DEAR HELEN,

“Yes, you are right about God’s Word not returning void.  Your own words, I admit, only hardened me; but those at the end of your letter broke me up.  I am so very far removed from light and fellowship, love and forgiveness.  I doubt if I can ever get back into the way of peace.

“But, anyhow, before the great Feast of Peace upon earth, goodwill toward men, I can take a first step by fully confessing the great wrong I did to you and to your husband rather more than a month ago, on the evening which he spent at my flat.

“Possibly you have found it out already; but possibly not, as I hear he has been very seriously ill.

“The evening he was here, he was more or less queer and light-headed, but he was full of you, and of his delight in going home.  I suppose this all helped to madden me.  No need to explain why.  You know.

“He had found a letter from you at the Poste Restante; but, rushing around to his publishers, etc., had not had time to read it.

“When he remembered it and found it in his pocket-book, he stood with his back to my stove, in great excitement, and tore it open; I sitting by.

“As he unfolded the large sheets of foreign paper, a note flew out from between them, and fell, unseen by him, to the floor.

“I put my foot on it.  I gathered, from extracts he read me from the letter, that this note was of importance.

“When he found in a postscript that you mentioned an enclosure, he hunted everywhere for it; not thinking, of course, to look under my foot.

“He then concluded, on my instigation, that, after all, you had not enclosed any note.

“At the first opportunity I transferred it to my pocket, made an excuse to leave the room, and read it.

“Helen, believe me, had I known beforehand the news that note contained, I don’t think I could have been such a fiend.

“But once having done it, I carried it through.  I allowed your husband to go home in total ignorance of the birth of his son.  It was I who put the word ‘astonishing’ into his telegram; and, in my letter to you, I led you to suppose I had heard the news from him.

“I don’t know exactly what I expected to gain from all this.  But, in a condition of mad despair, I seemed playing my very last card; and I played it for all it was worth—­which apparently was not much!