“Give me the letter,” he commanded, Sternly.
“Do you wish me to hate you?” she blazed.
“'Heaven forbid!”
“Then forget that your name is on this—this detestable envelope,” she cried, tearing the missive into pieces. He looked on in wonder, chagrin, disappointment.
“By George, Dorothy, that's downright cruel. It was intended for me—”
“You should thank me. I have only saved you the trouble of destroying it,” she said, smiling.
“I would have kept it forever,” he said, fervently.
“Here's a small bit of the envelope which you may keep as a souvenir. See, it has your name—'Philip'—on it. You shall have that much of the letter.” He took it rather gracelessly and, deliberately opening his watch, placed it inside the case. “I'd give $10,000 to know what that letter had to say to me.”
“You can never know,” she said, defiantly, from the bottom of the steps, “for I have forgotten the contents myself.”
She laughed as she ran upstairs, but he detected confusion in the tone, and the faint flush was still on her cheek. He sat down and wondered whether the contents would have pleased or displeased him. Philosophically he resolved that as long as he was never to know he might just as well look at it from a cheerful point of view; he would be pleased.