They were loitering over their teacups half an hour later when Lizzie came into the library with a special delivery letter.

“For me?” Julia smiled, reaching for it.  “It’s Jimmy!” she added ruefully, for Miss Toland’s benefit, as she took it.  “This means he can’t get here!”

“Drat the lad!” his aunt said mildly.  “What has he got to say?”

Julia pulled out a hairpin to open the letter, her face a little puzzled.  She unfolded three pages of large paper closely written.

“Why, I don’t understand this,” said she.  “Jimmy writes such short letters!”

And immediately fear, like cold iron, entered her heart, and she felt a chill of distaste for the letter; she did not want to read it, she wished she might fling it on the ere, and rid her hands of the horrible thing.

“It is Jim, isn’t it?” Miss Toland said, with a sharp look.  “Is he coming?”

“I don’t know,” Julia said, hardly above a whisper.

“Anything wrong?” Miss Toland asked, instantly alert.

“No, I don’t suppose so!” Julia said, trying to laugh.  “But—­but I hate him to just send a letter when I expected him!” she added childishly.

She picked it up, and began slowly to read it.  Miss Toland, watching her, saw the muscles of her face harden, and her eyes turn to steel.  The blood rushed to her face, and then receded quickly.  She read to the last word, and then looked up to meet the other woman’s eyes.

“What is it?” Miss Toland demanded, aghast at Julia’s look.

“It’s Jim,” said Julia.  Her face was blazing again, and she seemed to be choking.  “He’s going to Europe,” she went on, in a bewildered tone, “he’s not coming back.”

“What!” said Miss Toland sharply.  “D’you mean to tell me he’s simply walked off—­”

Julia’s colour was ghastly; her eyes looked sick and heavy.

“No, no, he can’t mean that!” she said quickly.  She crushed the pages of the letter together convulsively.  “I can’t—–­” she began, and stopped.  Suddenly she rose to her feet, muttered something about coming back, and was gone.

She ran up to her room, and alone there, it seemed for a few moments as if she must suffocate.  She put the letter on her desk, where its folded sheets instantly looked hideously familiar.  She went into the bathroom, and found herself holding her fingers under the hot-water tap, vaguely waiting for hot water.  Like a hunted creature she went through the luxurious rooms, the mortal wound in her heart widening every instant; finally she came back to her desk, and sat down, and read the letter again.

“Dear Julia,” wrote Jim, “I have been thinking and thinking about this affair, and I cannot stand it.  I am going away.  Atkins is going to Berlin for a three months’ course under Hofner and Braun, and I am going with him.  I only made up my mind to-night, but I have thought of something like this a long, long time.  I cannot bear it any longer.  I think and think about things—­that another man loved you and you loved him—­and I nearly go mad.  Even when people meet me and ask how you are, I am reminded of it; for weeks now I haven’t thought of anything else; it just seems to rise up wherever I go.