As she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front
room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath
her door.
For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of
Clive's handwriting,--for one moment only, before an overwhelming
reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible
resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't
he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched
hand.
Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as
though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed
sheets--perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of
her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at
last.
And after a while her nerveless hand relaxed; she looked down at the
crushed thing in her palm for a long time before she smoothed it out
and finally opened it.
He wrote: "It is too long a story to go into in detail. I couldn't,
anyway. My mother had desired it for a long time. I have
nothing to say about it except this: I would not for all the
world have had you receive the first information from the
columns of a newspaper. Of that part of it I have a right to
speak, because the announcement was made without my knowledge
or consent. And I'll say more: it was made even before I
myself was aware that an engagement existed.
"Don't mistake what I write you, Athalie. I am not trying to
escape any responsibility excepting that of premature
publicity. Whatever else has happened I am fully responsible
for.
"And so--what can I have to say to you, Athalie? Silence were
decenter perhaps--God knows!--and He knows, too, that in me
he fashioned but an irresolute character, void of the initial
courage of conviction, without deep and sturdy belief,
unsteady to a true course set, and lacking in rugged purpose.
"It is not stupidity: in the bottom of my own heart I know!
Custom, habit, acquired and inculcated acquiescence in
unanalysed beliefs--these require more than irresolution and
a negative disposition to fight them and overcome them.
"Athalie, the news you must have read in the newspapers
should first have come from me. Among many, many debts I must
ever owe you, that one at least was due you. And I defaulted;
but not through any fault of mine.
"I could not rest until you knew this. Whatever you may think
about me now--however lightly you weigh me--remember this--if
you ever remember me at all in the years to come: I was aware
of my paramount debt: I should have paid it had the
opportunity not been taken out of my own hands. And that debt
paramount was to inform you first of anybody concerning what
you read in a public newspaper.