I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to go away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or Ishould feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me.
I was awake all last night, and have a bad headache this morning. Ican't write any more.
ANTONIA.
His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in it an element of anger. He was reprieved! She would not break her promise; she considered herself bound! In the midst of the exaltation of this thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.
He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she had written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had led up to this.
The vagrant's farewell document had done the business. True to his fatal gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished without showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton those colours were made plain. Antonia had felt her lover was a traitor. Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision, Shelton knew that this was true.
"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-" That woman!
"It was as if you were on her side!"