When he was back at the door, he turned again and looked at her. Her whole fair outline, supine upon the couch, was illumined in a rosy gilding. The room behind her lay shadowy; her own form on its dark side was blurred. But that outline against the purple misty garden without was like a thing of enchantment. So still--so very beautiful--he thought of an effigy upon a tomb. He closed the door with a hissing breath drawn between his teeth. In his hand he held the key to all his doubt--the reply to the letter he had read. When he had also read this he would know what he must do; he would be able to realise what he had already done. He hastened downstairs feeling like a thief in his own house. He resented the fact of Hemming's quite natural presence in the hall, where the servant was busy removing the sticks, wet gloves, etc., which he had discarded upon his return home. He disappeared into his study, and sat down, wondering how his nefarious purpose could be best achieved, as there was no fire and no spirit-kettle handy. At first he thought he would have to wait until the following morning; but he believed that he should not sleep unless he had snatched the knowledge he so inordinately desired. He dined morosely, and there was sympathy in the kitchen for his lack of appetite. It was not surprising to Hemming when he brought coffee to find it declined, and to be ordered to bring in the small spirit-kettle and the whisky decanter. Alone at last, with the desired jet of steam, the monomaniac once more settled himself to his novel pursuit of tampering with seals. He had done so this morning without scruple. The letter he now held seemed to him far more sacred than the other. The blood rushed to his face, and his heart beat heavily as he peeled back the flap of the envelope. He felt almost as he might have felt had he intruded upon Virginia herself, as if he violated something pure and intact. The letter was withdrawn. It lay under his relentless gaze. He took a peep into his wife's very soul. _Mother! Mother!_ _If you had known how it would hurt, you could not have written to me so! What can I say to you? Can I reproach my own mother with injustice? Yet I feel I cannot let you write as you do without telling you how unkind it sounds._ _What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe God knows I did it for the best. I was at the very end of all my own strength; I was at the very end of all our money; I had you all dependent upon me; and I knew I was going to break down._ _I felt I had to serve you, and, oh, mother, you can't, you simply mustn't, deny that I have done that. Don't, for pity's sake, talk of my going off to be rich, and leaving you to the slavery that I found unbearable. That is not just, it is not true, but all the same it is torture to me that you should say it._