"Do you mean that you're tired?" Forbes' voice was self-controlled but in his pale cheeks a pulse beat like a trip hammer. Even his tears would not have hurt her like that palpitating spot over which his will was powerless.
"Yes, I am tired. I'm terribly tired of the people who talk about fate when it's all their own cowardice, and pity themselves for losing what they deliberately threw away."
"It's a matter of view-point," said Forbes tonelessly. "If that's all, I'm afraid I must ask you to go on. I—I could hardly have Howard read it." All at once his white cheek showed a stain of red, as if the mere thought that any eyes but his own should see that letter was humiliating beyond endurance.
Julia's letter was as long as usual and decidedly more sentimental. She surrendered herself with abandon to the luxury of heart-break. She recalled a number of tender episodes, and wondered pathetically why fate could not have spared lovers so fond. To Agatha, Julia's melancholy was a theatrical make-believe on the face of it, as much a pose as her pretense of affection. Agatha did her best to spoil the effect of the letter by reading rapidly, and in a monotonous sing-song, but she could not keep her eyes from the face of the man before her, and she saw that every tender memory the missive evoked found response in his tortured heart.
She wound up breathless and hot and trembling uncontrollably. Forbes thanked her with a formal courtesy that added to her pain, for it seemed to set her at a distance. She wanted to put her arms about him, and cry over him, and tell him that the hurt would not last. Then she remembered with bitterness that she was a withered old woman in whose heart the fires of love had burned to ashes, long, long before, if indeed they had ever been kindled.
"I'd like a sheet of paper, please," Forbes said with the same laborious politeness. "I'll scrawl a line myself."
"What are you going to tell her?"
His air of surprise at the question indicated that there was but one answer. "What is there to say, except to wish her all happiness?"
"You're not going to blame her, then?"