FullReads

Dinner over, they returned to the veranda, where a moon, rising behind the old elm, was combining with that complaisant tree a romantic enlargement of their borders. Glennard had forgotten the cigars. He went to his study to fetch them, and in passing through the drawing-room he saw the second volume of the “Letters” lying open on his wife’s table. He picked up the book and looked at the date of the letter she had been reading. It was one of the last . . . he knew the few lines by heart. He dropped the book and leaned against the wall. Why had he included that one among the others? Or was it possible that now they would all seem like that . . .?

Alexa’s voice came suddenly out of the dusk. “May Touchett was right–it IS like listening at a key-hole. I wish I hadn’t read it!”

Flamel returned, in the leisurely tone of the man whose phrases are punctuated by a cigarette, “It seems so to us, perhaps; but to another generation the book will be a classic.”

“Then it ought not to have been published till it had become a classic. It’s horrible, it’s degrading almost, to read the secrets of a woman one might have known.” She added, in a lower tone, “Stephen DID know her–“

“Did he?” came from Flamel.

“He knew her very well, at Hillbridge, years ago. The book has made him feel dreadfully . . . he wouldn’t read it . . . he didn’t want me to read it. I didn’t understand at first, but now I can see how horribly disloyal it must seem to him. It’s so much worse to surprise a friend’s secrets than a stranger’s.”

“Oh, Glennard’s such a sensitive chap,” Flamel said, easily; and Alexa almost rebukingly rejoined, “If you’d known her I’m sure you’d feel as he does. . . .”

Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular infelicity with which he had contrived to put Flamel in possession of the two points most damaging to his case: the fact that he had been a friend of Margaret Aubyn’s, and that he had concealed from Alexa his share in the publication of the letters. To a man of less than Flamel’s astuteness it must now be clear to whom the letters were addressed; and the possibility once suggested, nothing could be easier than to confirm it by discreet research. An impulse of self-accusal drove Glennard to the window. Why not anticipate betrayal by telling his wife the truth in Flamel’s presence? If the man had a drop of decent feeling in him, such a course would be the surest means of securing his silence; and above all, it would rid Glennard of the necessity of defending himself against the perpetual criticism of his wife’s belief in him. . . .

The impulse was strong enough to carry him to the window; but there a reaction of defiance set in. What had he done, after all, to need defence and explanation? Both Dresham and Flamel had, in his hearing, declared the publication of the letters to be not only justifiable but obligatory; and if the disinterestedness of Flamel’s verdict might be questioned, Dresham’s at least represented the impartial view of the man of letters. As to Alexa’s words, they were simply the conventional utterance of the “nice” woman on a question already decided for her by other “nice” women. She had said the proper thing as mechanically as she would have put on the appropriate gown or written the correct form of dinner-invitation. Glennard had small faith in the abstract judgments of the other sex; he knew that half the women who were horrified by the publication of Mrs. Aubyn’s letters would have betrayed her secrets without a scruple.