He held up a little creamy-hued envelope, smooth and thick as satin, addressed in a lady's elegant hand, and Leslie Dane caught it almost rudely from him. Carl gave a significant whistle and returned to his own correspondence.
Leslie Dane tore open the letter so long waited and hoped for, and devoured its contents with passionate impatience. It was very brief. Let us glance over his shoulder and read what was written there:
"Leslie," she wrote, "your letters have kept coming and coming, and every one has been like a stab to my heart. I pray you never to write to me again, for I have repented in bitterness of spirit the blind folly into which you led me that night. Oh, how could you do it? I was but a child. I did not know what love meant, and I was bewildered and carried away by your handsome face, and the romance of that moonlight flitting. It was wicked, it was cruel, Leslie, to bind me so, for, oh, God, I love another now, and I never can be his! But at least I will never be yours. I have burned your letters, and I shall hate your memory as long I live for the cruel wrong you did me. God forgive you, for I never can!
"Bonnibel."
Leslie Dane threw that dreadful letter down and ground it beneath his heel as though it had been a deadly serpent. It was, for it had stung him to the heart.
Carl Muller looked up at the strange sound of that grinding boot-heel, and saw his friend standing fixedly staring, into vacancy, his dark eyes blazing like coals of fire, his handsome face pallid as death, and set in a tense look of awful despair and bitterness terrible to behold.
Carl Muller sprang up and shook him violently by the arm.
"My God! Leslie," he cried, "what is it? What has happened to move you so? Is there anyone dead?"
The handsome artist did not seem to hear him. He stood immovable save for the horrid crunching of his boot-heel as it ground that fatal letter into fragments.
"Leslie," exclaimed Carl, "speak, for mercy's sake! You cannot imagine how horrible you look!"
Thus adjured Leslie Dane shook off his friend's clasp roughly, and strode across the room to a recess where a veiled picture hung against the wall.