Goldwin here broke in with a voice more hard and stern than any which Mrs. Lee had known to leave his lips. "If you will pardon me for saying so, I do not wish to continue as your listener. If you think my interruption outrageously rude, then let me admit with frankness that I can not--yes, literally _can_ not--endure what you now choose to state." She gave her small, dark head a passionate toss. "You can't endure it," she cried, "because you think that woman perfection! You can hear nothing that is not in her praise. You used to tell me that you thought Kate Diggs ridiculous; you used to laugh at her as a wild, eccentric creature. And now you are willing to credit her fictions." "They are not fictions," said Goldwin. "All she told me to-day was pure truth. Don't try any longer to shake my credence of it. Your efforts will not avail, I assure you." Mrs. Lee shivered. She put both hands up to her face, pressing them there for a moment, and then suddenly removed them. She set her dark eyes on Goldwin's face; they were glittering moistly. "You think I edged that woman on, to serve purposes of revenge," she faltered. "Well, Stuart, if I did so, what was my real reason?" Goldwin was drawing something from an inner side-pocket of his evening-coat. "Truly," he said, in dry, tepid tones, "I have no idea." He fidgeted with the required something while he thus spoke. The next moment he had produced it. It was a slim packet of letters. "I want to give you these," he said, with a brief, formal bow. He handed her the packet. She examined it for several minutes. "My letters," she murmured. "Your letters," he answered, with a slight repetition of his recent bow. She thrust the packet into her bosom. "You ... you have _kept_ all these?" she questioned, after hiding them. "Yes," he said. "And you give them back to me now," she pursued, "with a meaning? Well, with what meaning?" Goldwin walked quietly toward the doorway that led into the adjacent hall. "Oh, if you want the meaning put brutally," he said, using a tone and demeanor of much suavity, "I ... I--well, I am tired." "Tired?" she repeated. Her next sentence was a sort of gasp. "You--you hate me for what I have done!" "I did not say that." His foot was almost on the threshold of the door while he spoke. "Stuart!" she exclaimed, hurrying toward him. The lithe symmetry of her shape was very beautiful now; her worst detractor could not have said otherwise. She felt that the man whom she loved was leaving her forever. She put a hand on either of his shoulders. She tried to look into his eyes while he averted his own. "Will you leave me like this?" she went on. "You knew me long before you knew _her_! Don't let us quarrel. I--I confess everything. I--I have been very foolish. But you won't be too harsh with me--you will forgive, will you not?" He did not answer her. He removed her hands. Then he receded from her. "Stuart!" she still appealed.