"But didn't you read it to him?"
"He asked me to burn it."
She looked at me for some moments without understanding, then pulled herself lower into the bed and half turned away, shading her eyes with her hand. I walked to the window and gave her nearly a quarter of an hour to order her thoughts. At the end I asked her why she had written the letter.
"I felt I owed it to him," she said slowly. "I don't regret it, though I suppose it's a selfish sort of gratification.... If he'd left me alone, I should have said nothing, but when he went out of his way to have me brought here and looked after.... I—suppose it's very magnanimous to burn a letter of that kind without reading it, but I'd sooner have had him read it. If he comes here, I shall have to tell him ... at least that I'm going to have a child. Please don't think that I'm running away from what I've done. I'm not trying to work on his feelings, I'm not trying to make him take me back; I couldn't go back, if he begged me, if his life depended on it."
"Then it doesn't matter much whether he reads the letter or not."
Sonia nodded slowly.
"I must see David, though."
"It will upset you without doing him any good."
She bit her lip to steady herself.
"Perhaps it will cure him," she suggested.