He rose and moved away, saying—­

‘Open it!  Look at the letters!’

’No, that I can’t do.  What can it be that troubles you so?  Are they letters that I ought not to see?’

He could bear it no longer.

‘Yes,’ he answered, brusquely, ‘I suppose they are.’

’You mean that you have preserved letters which, as often as you open that drawer, remind you of someone else?—­that you purposely keep them so near your hand?’

‘Beatrice, I had no right to destroy them.’

‘No right!’ Her eyes flashed, and her tongue trembled with its scorn.  ‘You mean you had no wish.’

‘If I had no right, I could scarcely have the wish.’

Wilfrid was amazed at his own contemptible quibbling, but in truth he was not equal to the occasion.  He could not defend himself in choice phrases; in a sort of desperate carelessness he flung out the first retort that offered itself.  He was on the point of throwing over everything, of declaring that all must be at an end between them; yet courage failed for that.  Nor courage only; the woman before him was very grand in her indignation, her pale face was surpassingly beautiful.  The past faded in comparison with her; in his heart he doubted of its power.

Beatrice was gazing at him in resentful wonder.

‘Why have you done this?’ she asked.  ’Why did you come to me and speak those words?  What necessity was there to pretend what you did not feel?’

He met her eyes.

‘I have not spoken falsely to you,’ he said, with calmness which did not strengthen the impression his words were meant to convey.

’When you said that you loved me?  If it were true, you could not have borne to have those letters under your eyes.  You say you had no right to destroy them.  You knew that it was your duty to do so. Could you have kept them?’

Wilfrid had become almost absent-minded.  His heart was torn in two ways.  He wished to take the letters from their case and destroy them at once; probably it was masculine pride which now kept him from doing it.

‘I think you must believe what I say, Beatrice,’ was his answer.  ’I am not capable of deliberately lying to you.’

’You are not.  But you are capable of deceiving yourself; I accuse you of nothing more.  You have deceived yourself, and I have been the cause of it; for I had so little of woman’s pride that I let you see my love; it was as if I begged for your love in return.  My own heart should have taught me better; there can be no second love.  You pitied me!’

Wilfrid was in no state of mind to weigh phrases; at a later time, when he could look back with calmness, and with the advantage of extended knowledge, he recognised in these words the uttermost confession of love of ’which a woman is capable.  In hearing them, he simply took them as a reproach.

‘If such a thing had been possible,’ he said, ’it would have been a horrible injustice to you.  I asked you to be my wife because I loved you.  The existence of these letters is no proof that I misunderstood my own feeling.  There are many things we cannot explain to another on the moment.  You must judge the facts as you will, but no hasty and obvious judgment will hit the truth.’