He walked out of the room with the letter held tightly in his hand. As he reached the outer door Mrs. Ffolliott's voice called from above the stairs: "Rodney! You mustn't go! Lee may want you when he wakes." "I will come back," he answered. "Be sure! Come right back." Lawrence made an inarticulate sound in response, then he closed the outer door behind him and stood in the open air. He hastened beyond a thicket of syringa; then, leaning against a tree, he opened the paper again. "MY DEAR RODNEY:--It strikes me that Devil will be a remarkably fit messenger for the letter I'm going to write you. You see, I shall have it all written when I ride away this morning, but I think it will be more appropriate to take it with me and let Devil deliver it. You'll be sure to find it sooner or later. "I'm going away with Lord Maxwell. I suppose you'll think I'm the only one to blame in the affair, and perhaps I am. But no matter about that. You needn't believe for a moment that I'm the least little bit in love with him, for I'm not. Who could love a man with a chin like his, and who was always telling you how jolly you are? No, I don't love him, and I _was_ intensely in love with you. I've made a fine plan, I think. This is it: I go off with Donald--that's Lord Maxwell, you know. That makes a kind of scandal, to be sure, but it will soon blow over. I'm so deadly tired and deadly dull being with you, and you're so deadly tired and deadly dull being with me, that I, for one, think almost anything would be better than our staying together. You'll be able to get a divorce without the slightest trouble; and I'll get my freedom, too. Then we can change partners, as if the dance were over, and we glad enough that it is over. Marriage need not be such a hard and fast affair, for there's nothing in the world that people make such mistakes about as they do about marriage. Now, why not 'all change hands,' as they used to do in the old dances?