But, never having looked at it himself since the night of his father's death, he could not resist the temptation to glance through it once more before committing it to the flames. It fell open at the page which said,
"So it's all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do without me now. He needs his father no longer. With that brave woman by his side he will go up and up. They will marry and carry on the traditions of the Ballamoars. It is the dearest wish of my heart that they should do so."
His throat throbbed. Ah, those hopes, all wrecked and dead! Going down on one knee before the fire, and holding the book on the other, he tore out page by page and burnt it, feeling as if he were burning his right hand also. He was afraid of tears and had rarely given way to them, but he was weeping like a heart-broken woman before the last page had been consumed.
Then, taking Fenella's letters from his pocket-book, he prepared to burn them too. They brought a faint perfume, a feeling of warmth, a sense of her physical presence. Most of them were notes of no consequence—appointments to ride, drive, fish, skate, all touched by her gay raillery ("eight o'clock in the morning—is that too early for you, Victor, dear?")—he had preserved every scrap in her hand-writing. But one was the letter she wrote to him when he was in London, and with palpitating tenderness he held it under the lamp to read it again:
"Victor, when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of happiness that makes me cry with joy."
His heart swelled like a troubled sea, and to conquer his emotion he thrust the letter hurriedly into the flames. But before it was more than scorched he snatched it back and was preparing to return it to his pocket when he bethought himself how soon it must pass into other hands with everything he carried about him. And then, turning his head away, and feeling as if he were burning his heart also, he put it into the fire.
After that he dropped back on to the sofa with feelings about Fenella that found no relief in tears. One by one the joyous hours of their love returned to his memory. They seemed to ring in his ears with the melancholy sound of far-off bells. It was a cruel pleasure.
All at once came a moment of fierce rebellion. When he had told himself downstairs that in making the great renunciation of his public office he must renounce Fenella also he had not realised what it meant. It meant that never again, for as long as he lived (Fenella being impossible to him), would Woman take any part in his existence.
A cold fear took possession of him at that thought. He was a man—was he for the rest of his life, if he survived his imprisonment, to be cut off from his kind, separated, alone?
Better be dead than live such a life!