Linnet was really grateful to him. The man had frightened her. For the first time in her life, she admired her husband. The natural admiration that all her sex feel for physical strength and prowess in men was exceptionally marked in her, as in most other women of primitive communities. “Thank you,” she said simply, as Andreas strolled in, trying to look unconcerned, with his hands in his pockets, and confronted her stonily. “The man hurt my wrist. If you hadn’t come in, I don’t know what on earth he might ever have done to me.” Andreas stared at her in silence with close-knit brows for half-a-minute. Then he said in an insolent tone, “Now, tell me, what’s all this fuss he was making about some letter?” His question brought Linnet back to herself with a sudden revulsion of feeling. In the tremulousness of those two scuffles, she had almost forgotten for the moment all about the first cause of them. But now, she looked her husband back straight in the face, and, without flinching or hesitating, she answered him in a scarcely audible voice, “He brought me the last letter you wrote to Philippina. The one making an appointment at the usual place for three to-morrow. I don’t know how he got it, but he wanted to sell it to me.” Andreas never moved a muscle of that impassive face, but his colour came and went, and his breath stopped short, as he stood still and stared at her. “My last letter to Philippina!” he repeated, with a glow of shame. “And that fellow dared to show it to you! I’d have choked him if I’d known! The mean scoundrelly eavesdropper!” Linnet folded her hands in front of her where she sat on her low chair. Her air was resigned. She hardly seemed to notice him. “You needn’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s no matter to me. I guessed all that long ago. I didn’t want your letters, or hers either, to prove it to me. I told him as much. To me, at least, it’s no matter.” “And he offered to sell it you?” Andreas cried, growing in wrath. “He tried to make money of it! What did he want you to buy it for?” “He said I could get a divorce with it,” Linnet answered simply. “A divorce!” Andreas shouted, losing control of himself for once. That word went straight home to all the deepest chords in his sordid nature. “He wanted to egg you on, then, to try and get a divorce from me! He wanted to cheat me of all I’ve worked and toiled for!” He flung himself into a chair, and clenched his fists, and ground his teeth. “The damned rogue!” he cried once more. “When I get at him, oh, I’ll throttle him!”