n hearing them, he simply took them as a
reproach.

'If such a thing had been possible,' he said, 'it would have been a
horrible injustice to you. I asked you to be my wife because I loved
you. The existence of these letters is no proof that I misunderstood my
own feeling. There are many things we cannot explain to another on the
moment. You must judge the facts as you will, but no hasty and obvious
judgment will hit the truth.'

She was not listening to him. Her eyes were fixed upon the letters, and
over her heart there crept a desire which all but expelled other
feeling, a desire to know what was there written. She would have given
her hand to be alone in the room with that pocket-book, now that she
knew what it contained; no scruple would have withheld her. The
impossibility that her longing could ever be satisfied frenzied her with
jealousy.

'I will leave you with them,' she exclaimed, speaking her' thought. 'You
do not want me; I come between you and her. Read, and forget me; read
them once more, and see then if you do not understand yourself. I know
now why you have often been so cold, why it cost you an effort to reply
to me. You shall never have that trouble again.'

She moved to quit the room. Wilfrid called her.

'Beatrice! Stay and listen to me. These letters are nothing, and mean
nothing; Stay, and see me burn them.'

Irrational as it was, she could not bear to see them destroyed. In her
distracted mind there was a sort of crazy hope that he would at last
give them to her to burn; she might even perhaps have brought herself to
take them away.

'That is childish,' she said. 'You know them by heart; the burning of
the paper would alter nothing.'

'Then I can say and do no more.'

It had been like a rending of his heartstrings to offer to destroy these
memories of Emily, though he at the same time persuaded himself that,
once done, he would be a stronger and a happier man. In truth, they had
made the chief strength of the link between him and the past; every day
they had reminded him how much of the old feeling lingered in his being;
the sanctity with which these relics were invested testified to the
holiness of the worship which had bequeathed them. He had not opened the
case since his betrothal to Beatrice, and scarcely a day passed that he
did not purpose hiding it somewhere away for ever--not destroying.
Beatrice's answer to his offer caused him half to repent that he had
made it. He turned awa