As she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front
room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath
her door.

For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of
Clive's handwriting,--for one moment only, before an overwhelming
reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible
resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't
he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched
hand.

Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as
though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed
sheets--perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of
her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at
last.

And after a while her nerveless hand relaxed; she looked down at the
crushed thing in her palm for a long time before she smoothed it out
and finally opened it.

He wrote: "It is too long a story to go into in detail. I couldn't,
anyway. My mother had desired it for a long time. I have
nothing to say about it except this: I would not for all the
world have had you receive the first information from the
columns of a newspaper. Of that part of it I have a right to
speak, because the announcement was made without my knowledge
or consent. And I'll say more: it was made even before I
myself was aware that an engagement existed.