"(I _can_ call you that on paper and in my own heart, whatever you say about speaking.) "Let me explain. If you can bear how things are now, I can't, and I feel so terrible because although I meant absolutely nothing, I know it's all my fault. I _am_ sorry, do believe that, go on reading, but not a word of Zoë is _me_, really honestly. It's just Fiction like your books, but it's the only sort of life I knew. Surely you can't believe I think of you like that? The Husband was imaginary, and I only did it in the winter, to pass all the hours while you were working. I never called it _The Confessions of an Author's Wife_ at all, that was the publisher and people, and they never let me see it again till it was printed or I should have cut out a lot. "Really, my own darling husband, _it was not my fault_. It's all very awful and I am so sorry for you, but don't let's make it worse by quarrelling ourselves. I'm sure we can live it down and nothing will be worse than if we're seen to have quarrelled. We will write a note together to the papers saying it was Fiction. "Hugh, let me be forgiven and help you through this horrid time my _stupidity_, and that's all, has brought you to. You don't know how already I long to hear your laugh and just one kind word. We've not been sloppy, have we? but no one could be fonder or prouder of her husband, and I see so little of you anyhow. Don't rob me even of that. Come and tell me I'm forgiven and be your dear old comfy self again. I can't stand this. "Your loving and Oh so sorry, "H." She read it over again, laughing through tears, for now everything would be all right. Then, when she had sealed it and was about to write his name, another idea came to her. He might tear it up, unread! On the outside she wrote: To a very dear husband from a very sorry wife. _Quite short._ Read it! By now she felt almost on the old terms--and how dear they had been, she could see now--with him. This was the sort of thing he always liked so much. It made him call her "child." She had sent notes before, when she had to go out or something. Very quietly she went to his door, slipped the note silently beneath it, then with her bent finger gave it a good flick. She heard it whizz across the polished floor. He could not fail to see or hear it, as he always did. With a new sense of peace she went back to the drawing-room and waited. She was ashamed to notice, in the glass, how red her eyelids were. Did other wives spend awful hours like this or was it just that she was silly? Minutes passed; the hour struck; the quarter; the half-hour. He was not coming, then, till lunch time. What a slave of habit;--or was he trying to punish her by this suspense?... She fought that last idea: it would not be like Hugh. Possibly he had written and left it in the hall? She went out. There was nothing there.