She read it over again, laughing through tears, for now everything would be all right. Then, when she had sealed it and was about to write his name, another idea came to her. He might tear it up, unread!
On the outside she wrote:
To a very dear husband from a very
sorry wife.
Quite short.
Read it!
By now she felt almost on the old terms—and how dear they had been, she could see now—with him. This was the sort of thing he always liked so much. It made him call her "child." She had sent notes before, when she had to go out or something.
Very quietly she went to his door, slipped the note silently beneath it, then with her bent finger gave it a good flick. She heard it whizz across the polished floor. He could not fail to see or hear it, as he always did.
With a new sense of peace she went back to the drawing-room and waited. She was ashamed to notice, in the glass, how red her eyelids were.
Did other wives spend awful hours like this or was it just that she was silly?
Minutes passed; the hour struck; the quarter; the half-hour.
He was not coming, then, till lunch time. What a slave of habit;—or was he trying to punish her by this suspense?...
She fought that last idea: it would not be like Hugh. Possibly he had written and left it in the hall? She went out. There was nothing there.