The words did actually shape themselves in his mind, and he half believed that he had uttered them. They did not, however, escape his lips. He was instinctively restrained by the consideration that in his punishment Adelaide would be involved. What right had he deliberately to ruin and expose her? A cowardly act thus to sacrifice a woman who in this crisis relied upon him for protection. In a humiliating, shameful sense it is true, but none the less was she under his direct protection at this moment. Self-tortured as he was he could still show that he had some spark of manliness left in him. To recklessly dispose of the fate of the woman whose only crime was that she loved him--this he dared not do.
His mood changed. Arrived at this conclusion, his fear now was that he had betrayed himself--that in some indefinite way he had given the Advocate the key to his thoughts, or that he had, by look or expression, conveyed to his friend a sense of the terrible importance of the perfumed note which lay upon the desk.
"You do not answer me, Christian," said the Advocate.
But Almer could not speak. His eyes were fixed upon Adelaide's note, and he found it impossible to divert his attention from the idle movements of the Advocate's fingers. His unreasoning impulse to hasten discovery was gone, and he was afflicted now by a feeling of apprehension. It was his imperative duty to protect Adelaide; while the Advocate's hand rested upon the envelope which contained her secret she was not safe. At all risks, even at the hazard of his life, must she be held blameless. Had the Advocate lifted the envelope from the desk, Almer would have torn it from him.
"Why do you not speak?" asked the Advocate. "Surely there is nothing offensive in such a question between friends like ourselves."
"I can offer you no explanation of what I am about to say," replied Almer: "it may sound childish, trivial, pitiful, but my thoughts are not under my own control while your hand is upon that letter."
With the slightest expression of surprise the Advocate handed Almer the envelope, scarcely looking at it as it passed from his possession.
"Why did you not speak of it before?" he said. "But when a mind is unbalanced, trifling matters are magnified into importance."
"I can only ask you to forgive me," said Almer, placing the envelope in his pocket-book. "I have no doubt in the course of your career you have met with many small incidents quite as inexplicable." Then an excuse which would surely be accepted occurred to him. "It may be sufficient for me to say that this is the first night of my return to the house in which I was born and passed a not too happy boyhood, and that in this room my mother died."
The Advocate pressed Almer's hand.