It ran:—
"DEAR KENNETH SPEED—As I told you last night I feel thoroughly disgusted with myself—I knew I should. I'm very sorry I acted as I did, though of course everything I said was true. If you take my advice you'll take Helen right away and never come near Millstead any more. Begin life with her afresh, and don't expect it to be too easy. As for me—you'd better forget if you can. We mustn't ever see each other again, and I think we had better not write, either. I really mean that and I hope you won't send me any awfully pathetic reply as it will only make things more awkward than they are. There was a time when you thought I was hard-hearted; you must try and think so again, because I really don't want to have anything more to do with you. It sounds brutal, but it isn't, really. You have still time to make your life a success, and the only way to do it in the present circumstances is to keep away from my evil influence. So good-bye and good luck. Yours—C.H."—"P.S. If you ever do return to Millstead you won't find me there."
He was so furious that he tore the letter up and flung it into the fire.
"What is it?" enquired Helen.
He forced himself to reply: "Oh, only a tradesman's letter."
She answered, with vague sympathy: "Everybody's being perfectly horrid, aren't they?"
"Oh, I don't care," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and eating vigorously. "I don't care a damn for the lot of them."
She looked at him in thoughtful silence.
Towards the end of the meal he had begun to wonder if it had been Clare's object to put him in just that mood of fierce aggressiveness and truculence. He wished he had not thrown the letter into the fire. He would like to have re-read it, and to have studied the phrasing with a view to more accurate interpretation.
That was about seven-thirty in the morning. The bells were just beginning to ring in the dormitories and the floors above to creak with the beginnings of movement. It was a dull morning in early March, cold, but not freezing; the sky was full of mist and clouds, and very likely it would rain later. As he looked out of the window, for what might be the last time in his life, he realised that he was leaving Millstead without a pang. It astonished him a little. There was nothing in the place that he still cared for. All his dreams were in ruins, all his hopes shattered, all his enthusiasms burned away; he could look out upon Millstead, that had once contained them all, without love and without malice. It was nothing to him now; a mere box of bricks teeming with strangers. Even the terror of it had vanished; it stirred him to no emotion at all. He could leave it as casually as he could a railway station at which he had stopped en route.