“Nancy!” she called; then stood rigid and cold, holding the portière with one hand and averting her face.
“Yes, mum.”
“If it is any one for me——”
She hesitated again. She could see herself in the long mirror between the windows. She drew herself up and sent a smile, half-triumphant, half-derisive, at her image, “Say I’m not at home,” she ended.
The door opened, there was a pause, then it closed. Nancy entered, “Only a note, mum.” She held it out and Emily took it—Stanhope’s writing. She tore it open and read:
“I have a presentiment that you, too, have seen the truth. We may not go the journey together, I have come to my senses. If it was love that we offered each the other, then we do well to strangle the monster before it strangles us, and tramples into the mire all that each of us has done for good thus far.
I—and you, too—feel like one who dreams that he is about to seize delight and awakens to find that he was leaping from a window to destruction.
This is not renunciation. It is salvation.
Evelyn tells me she is to see you to-morrow. I am glad that you and my daughter are friends.”
She read the note again, and, after a long interval, a third time. Then she bent slowly and laid it upon the coals. She sat in a low chair, watched the paper curl into a tremulous ash, which presently drifted up the chimney. She was not conscious that there was any thought in her mind. She was conscious only of an enormous physical and mental relief.