“Mrs. Duglade . . .” he said in bewilderment, “Mrs. Duglade . . .”
“A friend of Angela’s,” said Clementina.
“Yes. A school friend. They saw very little of each other. I met her only once or twice. I had no notion Hammersley knew her. . . . Her husband was a brute, I remember—used to beat her. . . . I think I heard she had left him——”
“For Will Hammersley.”
“He died years ago . . . of drink. . . . Oh-h!” He shuddered and hid his face in his hands.
“Read these few pages,” said Clementina and she left the room very quietly.
About ten minutes afterwards she came in again. He sprang up from his chair and grasped both her hands. His eyes were wet and his lips worked tremulously.
“I found a letter from Hammersley in Angela’s drawer—it had got stuck at the back. . . . It was for the other woman, my dear——” his voice quavered into the treble. “It was for the other woman.”
She led him to the stiff sofa and sat beside him and held his hand. And she had the joy of seeing a black cloud melt away from a man’s soul.
From that hour when he had revealed to her the things deep and sacred, dark and despairing of his heart, and had gone forth from her sympathy aglow with a new-found faith in humanity, the bond between them was strengthened a thousandfold. Quixtus found that he could obtain not only swift response to his thoughts from a keen intelligence, but wide, undreamed of understanding of all those subtle workings of the spirit, regrets, hopes, judgments, prejudices, shrinkings, wonderings, impulses, which are too elusive to be thoughts, too vague to be emotions. And yet, she herself was never subtle. She was direct and uncompromising. As a shivering man enters a cosy room and warms himself before a blazing fire, so did he unquestioningly warm his heart in Clementina’s personality. And as the shivering man knows, without speculating, that the fire is intense and strong, so did he know that Clementina was intense and strong.