I did not enjoy the dinner at all because I could not deny to myself that I had been unkind to her, with that tacit unkindness that is so keenly felt and is so difficult to meet or combat. I left the hotel where the dinner had been held quite early, and drove back to the house, longing and impatient to be with her again, hold her in my arms, and tell her all I had resolved and been thinking about, and kiss the bright colour back into her face again.
I let myself in with my latch-key and ran up the stairs into the drawing-room.
It was brightly lighted, but empty. I was just going to seek her upstairs when a note set up before the clock on the mantelpiece caught my eye.
I crossed the room, took it up, tore it open, and ran my eyes hurriedly down it, line after line.
"Dearest,
"Our relations have entered upon a new phase lately. I suppose it cannot be helped, it is merely the turning on of the wheel of time. We cannot stay the wheel, still less turn it back. All we can do is to adjust ourselves to the new position.
"You have wished for your freedom. It is yours. I have never wanted to take it away, but I feel I cannot go on dedicating my life and every thought I have to you as I have done, if you wish to share with others all that has been mine and all that I value most in this or any world. I have tried, but it is beyond me. You cannot think what I have suffered in these last weeks. I have reasoned with myself, asked myself what did it matter what you did when you were away from me, why should one rival now matter more than those the past has held for me? I have argued, reasoned, fought with myself, but it is useless. These unconquerable instincts of jealousy have been placed in us and are as strong as those other instincts of desire that excite them.
"The life of the last few weeks is killing me. I am losing my health, losing my power to work. It is the concentration of all my thoughts upon you that is maddening, impossible now that you no longer belong to me. Even your presence, once the sun of my existence, is painful to me now; and when you come straight from another woman to kiss me, it is agony. I cannot bear it.
"You thought I did not know all the kisses and caresses you have given Veronica. Dear Trevor, a woman always knows—perhaps a man does, too. Certainly I knew. One does not have to see or hear; there is a sense, not yet discovered, that is above all the others, that tells us these things. When you came from her to me you brought with you an influence that killed. Perhaps it was that you were surrounded with an electricity from her that was hostile to my own.
"I have felt lately a longing to be away from you, a longing to escape from pain and torture, but the music keeps me in town, and we cannot well separate here without a scandal, which I know you would not wish. So I am going to try and escape mentally from you, though our bodies must occupy the same house for a little while longer.