His hand,—the massive, veiny hand of a man accustomed to “do himself well,” trembled, and the paper shook between his fingers.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, unsteadily—“It—it was written quite a long time ago!”
“You sent it to me,” replied Diana. “I returned all your other letters, but I kept that one,—and this.”
Another note was drawn daintily out from the blue velvet bag, and she handed it to him with a smile.
Again his burning eyes travelled along his own familiar scrawl:
“I am quite sure you will understand that time has naturally worked changes in you as well as in myself, and I am obliged to confess that the feelings I had for you no longer exist. But you are a sensible woman, and you are old enough now to realise that we are better apart.”
He lifted his head and tried to look at her. She met his shifting gaze with a clear and level splendour of regard that pierced his very soul with a subconscious sense of humiliation and conviction. Yet it was not possible for him to believe her story,—the whole suggestion was too fantastic and incredible. He gave her back the letters. She took them from his hand.
“Well!” she said, tentatively.
“Well!” he rejoined—then forced a difficult smile—“I wrote these things, certainly, but how you came by them I don’t know. Though, after all, you might easily have met the other Diana May, and she might have given you her confidence——”
“And her lover’s letters to keep?” said Diana, contemptuously. “So like her! Reginald Cleeve, you said just now that I was playing—playing with you and with myself. Believe me, I never was further from ‘play’ in my life! I’m in deadly earnest! I want——” She paused and laughed—then added: “I only want what I can have for the asking—you!”