A chambermaid brought Daphne a letter at half-past six o’clock next morning. She had fallen asleep in the summer sunlight after a night of almost utter sleeplessness; the warm air blowing in upon her across the hills on the opposite side of the river; the noises of the early awakened town floating up from the valley below. She started from her pillow, scared and agitated at the sound of the chambermaid’s knock, and took the letter with a trembling hand. Gerald’s writing! She knew it too well; yet this was the first letter he had ever addressed to her. ‘How dare he write to me?’ she exclaimed angrily, as she tore open the envelope. The letter began with no fond words of endearment. The writer dashed at his meaning with passionate directness, with feeling too intense to be eloquent. ‘Tell me what I am to do. After last night, my future, my life, are in your hands. Both belong to you if you will have them. Shall I break the truth to Lina? Shall I tell her how, little by little, in spite of myself, my heart has been beguiled away from that calm affection which was once all-sufficient for the joy of life; how a new and passionate love has replaced the old; and that, although I shall honour, respect, and admire her as the first and best of women till the end of my days, I am no longer, I never can be again, her lover? I think, Daphne, that the hard, outspoken, brutal truth may be the wisest and best. Let us look Fate in the face. Neither you nor I can ever be happy asunder. Will the sacrifice of my happiness secure Lina’s? Answer me from your heart of hearts, my beloved, as you answered me on the bridge last night.’ There was not an instant’s doubt in Daphne’s mind as to how this letter must be answered. Lina’s happiness sacrificed to hers! Lina, so good, so pure-minded, in all things so much above her, to be made miserable, in order that she might triumph in a successful treachery! ‘I don’t think the most virtuous person in the world could loathe me worse than I should loathe myself, if I were to do this thing,’ she said to herself resolutely. She sat down by the open window, wrapped in her loose white dressing-gown, her soft golden hair falling over her shoulders like a veil, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy, an image of youthful sorrow.