"Let me buy you a bracelet!"
"I love you!"
Ralph's voice stopped suddenly. There were deep echoes in the great room, which made him thrill and shudder. How still and terrible were the silence and loneliness!
A pang, half of guilt, half of fear, went keenly to his heart. It seemed to him that his mother was standing by his shoulder, pointing with her thin, tremulous fingers to the writing beneath him, and saying:
"My boy, what does this mean?"
He held it in the candle-flame, and thought he felt better when it was burned; but he could not burn all those thoughts of which the paper was only a copy.