‘Ah, Tony! there’s the looking back.  And, of all women, you!’

’Or else, dear-well, perhaps once on foreign soil, in a different air, I might—­might have looked back, and seen my whole self, not shattered, as I feel it now, and come home again compassionate to the poor persecuted animal to defend her.  Perhaps that was what I was running away for.  I fled on the instinct, often a good thing to trust.’

‘I saw you at The Crossways.’

’I remembered I had the dread that you would, though I did not imagine you would reach me so swiftly.  My going there was an instinct, too.  I suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels.  Forgive me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the common human sum.  “Pariah” and “taboo” are words we borrow from barbarous tribes; they stick to me.’

‘My Tony, you look as bright as ever, and you speak despairingly.’

‘Call me enigma.  I am that to myself, Emmy.’

‘You are not quite yourself to your friend.’

’Since the blow I have been bewildered; I see nothing upright.  It came on me suddenly; stunned me.  A bolt out of a clear sky, as they say.  He spared me a scene:  There had been threats, and yet the sky was clear, or seemed.  When we have a man for arbiter, he is our sky.’

Emma pressed her Tony’s unresponsive hand, feeling strangely that her friend ebbed from her.

‘Has he . . . to mislead him?’ she said, colouring at the breach in the question.

‘Proofs?  He has the proofs he supposes.’

‘Not to justify suspicion?’

‘He broke open my desk and took my letters.’

‘Horrible!  But the letters?’ Emma shook with a nervous revulsion.

‘You might read them.’

‘Basest of men!  That is the unpardonable cowardice!’, exclaimed Emma.

‘The world will read them, dear,’ said Diana, and struck herself to ice.  She broke from the bitter frigidity in fury.  ’They are letters—­none very long—­sometimes two short sentences—­he wrote at any spare moment.  On my honour, as a woman, I feel for him most.  The letters—­I would bear any accusation rather than that exposure.  Letters of a man of his age to a young woman he rates too highly!

The world reads them.  Do you hear it saying it could have excused her for that fiddle-faddle with a younger—­a young lover?  And had I thought of a lover! . . .  I had no thought of loving or being loved.  I confess I was flattered.  To you, Emma, I will confess . . . .  You see the public ridicule!—­and half his age, he and I would have appeared a romantic couple!  Confess, I said.  Well, dear, the stake is lighted for a trial of its effect on me.  It is this:  he was never a dishonourable friend; but men appear to be capable of friendship with women only for as long as we keep out of pulling distance of that line where friendship ceases.  They may step on it;