“Gone!” he repeated. “Gone where?... What do you mean?”
“I am goin’ to tell you what I mean. There is a lot to tell. Foster, I— Oh, dear!” desperately, “I don’t know where to begin. This is harder even than I thought it was goin’ to be. Foster, you must be patient.”
She had frightened him now. She heard him catch his breath.
“What is the matter with you?” he demanded. “What—!” Then his tone changed. He leaned toward her, his hand upon the center table. “Say, Reliance,” he whispered, anxiously, “you are fooling, aren’t you? She is in this house, isn’t she? Look here, if she is hiding from me—if she has got the idea that I am mad with her or anything like that—why, she needn’t be. We had a row, she and I, up at the house this noon; maybe she told you about it, I don’t know. Well, that’s all right. I— Here! Why do you keep looking at me like that?... What is that thing?”
Reliance was proffering him an envelope which she had taken from the bosom of her dress. He gazed at it, then snatched it from her hand.
“Eh?” he gasped. “It’s from her, isn’t it? What is she writing me letters for?... Good God, woman, what has happened? Where is she? Why don’t you tell me?”
Reliance shook her head.
“Read your letter first,” she said. “It will tell you almost everything and I will try and tell you the rest.... Oh, Foster,” in an irrepressible burst of agonized sympathy. “I am so sorry for you.”
She did not wait to see him open the envelope, but ran into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She remained there for perhaps ten minutes, it seemed much longer to her. When she reëntered the sitting-room he was seated in the rocker, the letter which Esther had written him dangling in his limp fingers, and upon his face a look which wrung her heartstrings. She came toward him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“I am so sorry for you, Foster,” she said again.