"Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter—at first I thought so—the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt—so deeply that he will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thought when I first read it...but the postscript undoes it all."
Justine, as she spoke, had drawn near Bessy, laying a hand on her arm, and shedding on her the radiance of a face all charity and sweet compassion. It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her own relation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast aside all consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove to reach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attempt to help a wounded animal.
For a moment Bessy seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up her cheek, her long lashes drooped—she had the tenderest lids!—and all her face seemed melting under the beams of Justine's ardour. But the letter was still in her hand—her eyes, in sinking, fell upon it, and she sounded beneath her breath the fatal phrase: "'I have done this solely because you asked it.'
"After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feel competent to set everybody's affairs in order! But take my advice, my dear—don't ask me not to ride Impulse!"
The pity froze on Justine's lip: she shrank back cut to the quick. For a moment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of arrowy, wounding thoughts; then Bessy's anger flagged, she gave one of her embarrassed half-laughs, and turning back, laid a deprecating touch on her friend's arm.
"I didn't mean that, Justine...but let us not talk now—I can't!"
Justine did not move: the reaction could not come as quickly in her case. But she turned on Bessy two eyes full of pardon, full of speechless pity...and Bessy received the look silently before she moved to the door and went out.
"Oh, poor thing—poor thing!" Justine gasped as the door closed.
She had already forgotten her own hurt—she was alone again with Bessy's sterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment—then her eyes fell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them. The fatal letter! If it had not come at that unlucky moment perhaps she might still have gained her end.... She picked it up and re-read it. Yes—there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart might misconstrue.... Yet Bessy's last words had absolved her.... Why had she not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly—for one miserable moment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate, irrepressible self—the moi haïssable of the Christian—if only one could tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity—her last opportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences, cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might have drawn their freezing ring about Bessy's heart....
Justine started up to follow her...then paused, recalling her last words. "Let us not talk now—I can't!" She had no right to intrude on that bleeding privacy—if the chance had been hers she had lost it. She dropped back into her seat at the desk, hiding her face in her hands.