"Your violence has so agitated me that it has only been after a long struggle that I have brought myself to write you. But I persuade myself, as indeed I must, that you were unconscious of your harshness. I will not, therefore, offer you my forgiveness for an offense which was unintentional. But I think it better that we do not meet immediately. I am the more urgent in this because I wish your spirit to be soothed and your anger against me to be mitigated, so that you shall hear me calmly. For, I have much to say to you—a sad confession to make which may be even harder for you to bear than the sorrow you have already borne. But I have hope that if you will hear it calmly you will recognize that if I did not love you I could not open my heart to you, as I shall do. My husband, I have not been that which I so long to be in future, a true wife to you. But I know, for I know your goodness of heart, that when you have heard all you will pardon all, and that our future shall be cloudless; that your love shall help me to be that which I have failed in being—your faithful wife."
No need now, having read this confession, to consider his future course. It was fixed. He looked at his watch. The train left at midnight. He would write the necessary answer to the letter at once.
He wrote swiftly and without pause. His brain had never been clearer, his heart never lighter.
A few minutes before midnight he quietly left the house. When he had crossed the street to the Square he looked back at the only home he had ever known. For good or for evil he was about to leave it, never to return the husband of the woman who watched in the dimly lighted chamber. A sob shook him as he turned from the light toward the darkness.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE RUINS OF HER AIR-CASTLE LAY AROUND HER.
Father Cameril laid down the "Life of St. Dunstan" and sighed. "He was strong, he was faithful," muttered the good Father. "Alas!" and he sighed again.
He took a photograph from his pocket and gazed long upon the pictured features. "Dr. Hicks did it," he murmured. Then he replaced the photograph and went forth, going toward the sea, until at last, by many a devious way, he came into the grounds of Stormpoint, and there, by Eliphalet's Tomb, he saw a woman. "'Tis fate," he muttered. The woman turned; Father Cameril started. He was face to face with Natalie.
He stammered awkwardly, being wholly taken by surprise, that he had thought she was Miss Lynford; then, after some conventional references to the weather, he escaped. Natalie watched him as he walked away, then fell into bitter musings, in which he had no part.