"You see how I restrain myself. I could write as madly as I feel--violently and madly. But of set purpose we pitched our relation in a certain key and measure; and I try, at least, to keep the measure, if the music and the charm must go. But why, in God's name, should they go? Why have you turned against me? You have listened to slanderers; you have secretly tried me by tests that are not in the bargain, and you have judged and condemned me without a hearing, without a word. I can tell you I am pretty sore.
"I will come and see you no more in company for the present. You gave me a footing with you, which has its own dignity. I'll guard it; not even from you will I accept anything else. But--unless, indeed, the grove is cut down and the bird flown forever--let me come when you are alone. Then charge me with what you will. I am an earthy creature, struggling through life as I best can, and, till I saw you, struggling often, no doubt, in very earthy ways. I am not a philosopher, nor an idealist, with expectations, like Delafield. This rough-and-tumble world is all I know. It's good enough for me--good enough to love a friend in, as--I vow to God, Julie!--I have loved you.
"There, it's out, and you must put up with it. I couldn't help it. I am too miserable.
"But I won't write any more. I shall stay in my rooms till twelve o'clock. You owe me promptness."
She looked round her little study with a kind of despair--the despair perhaps of the prisoner who had thought himself delivered, only to find himself caught in fresh and stronger bonds. As for ambition, as for literature--here, across their voices, broke this voice of the senses, this desire of "the moth for the star." And she was powerless to resist it. Ah, why had he not accepted his dismissal--quarrelled with her at once and forever?
She understood the letter perfectly--what it offered, and what it tacitly refused. An intimate and exciting friendship--for two years. For two years he was ready to fill up such time as he could spare from his clandestine correspondence with her cousin, with this romantic, interesting, but unprofitable affection. And then?
She fell again upon his letter. Ah, but there was a new note in it--a hard, strained note, which gave her a kind of desperate joy. It seemed to her that for months she had been covetously listening for it in vain.