He did not notice her.
“I wonder if you destroyed that letter. There’s a good deal of reason to suppose that you didn’t. People—especially women—don’t destroy letters. They keep them around—even dangerous ones.”
He had his eyes apparently on the ground—cleverly cast down but he caught an uncontrollable movement, not of her angry head but of her eyes, toward the spinet desk in the corner. It would have told anyone all he wished to know. But at that moment her tactics changed again.
“Jim, you fool,” she said, “I’ll tell you about that letter and why I never gave it to you. I did read it—yes. After I read the brutal one to me I had to read yours. In those days I was close to you, you may be gracious enough to remember. I wanted to spare you. I couldn’t give you that dead man’s curse. I burned it. It was a dreadful letter.”
Her shudder was perfect but belated. Earlier she might have hoodwinked Jim again. But not after that little fearful glance at her desk—that utterly involuntary glance.
“Yes,” said Jim, quietly, “but it’s in that desk.”
“So you think I’m a liar!”
“I know that.”
He was impatient now. “And I’m going to search that desk.”
She was before him but he put her aside with one strong hand and forced her into a chair. Some spring broke in her then. He had taken the right method, physical force, the only thing that cows such a woman. He stood over her menacingly.