But his anger could only for an instant find fuel to feed it in the woman he loved. It turned at once against the other, and his thoughts turned with it to her letters, the only bond between them which remained.
They formed the packet of many coloured papers which at last, blind with scorn to their sanctity, he had drawn from its secret place.
He had kept them without defined intention; certainly with no premonition of needing them in his defence; so far as he could remember, only to remind himself how that strange disturbance of his life had come about.
But now, as his anger burnt the better part of him, he saw another use for them. They alone could justify, could extenuate what he had done. No man who had endured an undesired love could read them and condemn.
But a woman? That was another matter. And a woman, too, who had adored! How would she read their raving violence?
Would she believe that the woman who wrote so wildly of the surrender of herself had never dreamed of giving him more by it than her lips.
He wondered. Women were so hopelessly ignorant of one another. So unable to conceive as womanly any qualities but their own; so unable to believe even in the existence of a compulsion which would not move themselves.
Well, whether she believed or not, whether she would divine and forgive, or be confirmed in her contempt, there remained no other way to move, nor even to approach her.
It was horrible to have received such letters from a woman one did not love, more horrible still to use them in one's defence. But she had left him no alternative.
It was through her offence that he came to be fighting for what was dearer than his life. Was any right left her to complain of his weapon?