She was not listening to him.  Her eyes were fixed upon the letters, and over her heart there crept a desire which all but expelled other feeling, a desire to know what was there written.  She would have given her hand to be alone in the room with that pocket-book, now that she knew what it contained; no scruple would have withheld her.  The impossibility that her longing could ever be satisfied frenzied her with jealousy.

‘I will leave you with them,’ she exclaimed, speaking her’ thought.  ’You do not want me; I come between you and her.  Read, and forget me; read them once more, and see then if you do not understand yourself.  I know now why you have often been so cold, why it cost you an effort to reply to me.  You shall never have that trouble again.’

She moved to quit the room.  Wilfrid called her.

’Beatrice!  Stay and listen to me.  These letters are nothing, and mean nothing; Stay, and see me burn them.’

Irrational as it was, she could not bear to see them destroyed.  In her distracted mind there was a sort of crazy hope that he would at last give them to her to burn; she might even perhaps have brought herself to take them away.

‘That is childish,’ she said.  ’You know them by heart; the burning of the paper would alter nothing.’

‘Then I can say and do no more.’

It had been like a rending of his heartstrings to offer to destroy these memories of Emily, though he at the same time persuaded himself that, once done, he would be a stronger and a happier man.  In truth, they had made the chief strength of the link between him and the past; every day they had reminded him how much of the old feeling lingered in his being; the sanctity with which these relics were invested testified to the holiness of the worship which had bequeathed them.  He had not opened the case since his betrothal to Beatrice, and scarcely a day passed that he did not purpose hiding it somewhere away for ever—­not destroying.  Beatrice’s answer to his offer caused him half to repent that he had made it.  He turned away from her.

She, after looking at the pocket-book still for some moments, seemed to force herself away.  He heard her open the door, and did not try to stay her.

Half an hour later, Wilfrid restored the letters to their place in the drawer.  If they were to be destroyed, it must now be in Beatrice’s presence.  With something like joy he turned the key upon them, feeling that they were preserved, that the last farewell was once again postponed.  Wilfrid was not a very strong man where sacrifice ’was demanded of him.