u brought with you an influence that killed. Perhaps it was that
you were surrounded with an electricity from her that was hostile
to my own.

"I have felt lately a longing to be away from you, a longing to
escape from pain and torture, but the music keeps me in town, and
we cannot well separate here without a scandal, which I know you
would not wish. So I am going to try and escape mentally from you,
though our bodies must occupy the same house for a little while
longer.

"I am going to try to interest myself in others, not to think of
you, not to care for you as I have done. We have both been foolish
perhaps, as you say, in limiting our lives to each other, let us
end the idea between us. Let us be like ordinary married people.
You are free to choose whatever paths of pleasure open before you,
I am the same. To-night when you come back you will find this
letter instead of me. I shall dine out with one of these men who
want me and afterwards spend the evening with him. I will come
back early enough to cause no comment, but I will not come to your
room, as I do not suppose you will want me. I have had another
room put ready, and I shall go there.

"Good-bye, dearest one; if you could know all the agony that has
gone before this breaking of the tie between us! Now I seem to
feel nothing; I am dead. I can't cry; can't think any more.

"VIOLA."

* * * * *

I read this letter through with an agonised terror coming over me,
that gripped and wrung my heart, through the cloud of amaze that
filled me. Towards the end the words seemed to stab me. As I came to
the conclusion the truth broke upon me in a blinding, lightning flash.
_I_ had lost her. But it was incredible, unthinkable. She was part of
my life, part of myself. I still lived; therefore, she was mine. I
felt paralysed. I could not grasp fully what she had said, what she
intended me to understand. It was as when one is told a loved one is
dead. It means nothing to us for a moment. Reason goes down under a
flood of sickening fear. I read the last page over again.

Then I sprang to my feet and stared round the empty room as if seeking
an explanation from it. It offered none. All round me was orderly,
placid. Only within me burned a hell, lighted by those written words.
It was very quiet, only an occasional drip of the June rain outside
broke