Her brother-in-law had asked her to look through her husband's papers for an insurance policy he thought Jack had taken on his advice. In the old desk Bragdon had used there was a mass of letters and bills, a great many unpaid bills, some of which she had given him months and months before and had supposed were paid. There were two letters in an odd foreign hand that she knew instantly must be the Russian woman's. The first was dated from the _manoir_ at Klerac on the evening of their sudden departure. Milly hesitated a moment as if she must respect the secrets of the dead, then with a last trace of jealousy tore it open and read the lines:-- ... "So you have decided--you are going back. You will give up all that you have won, all that might be yours,--and ours. I knew it would be so. The puritan in you has won the day,--the weak side. You will never be content with what you are doing, never. I have seen far enough within your soul to know that.... I ask nothing for myself--I have had enough,--no, not that,--but more than I could hope. But for you, who have the great power in you, it is not right. You cannot live like that.... Some day you will be glad as I am that we were not little people, but drank life when it was at our lips." Milly dropped the letter and stared blankly at the dark wall opposite. What it revealed did not come to her with shock, because she had always felt sure that it had been so. What startled her was the realization for the first time how much the experience had meant to both,--the examination of the picture and the silence of death enabled her to understand that. He had had the strength--or was it rather weakness?--to do "the right thing," to renounce love and fulfilment and fame because of her and their child. It came over her in a flash that she could not have done as much. Give up love that was strong and creative--no, never, not for all the right and convention on the earth. Any more than the Russian woman would have given it up! Women were braver than men sometimes. She folded the letter and put it back in its envelope with a curious feeling of relief, a sort of gladness that he had had even the little there was--those few days of fulfilment, of the diviner other life which with all the years between them they had failed to grasp.