She drew nearer to him, and put her hand gently on his shoulder. “Don’t think that I distrust you,” she said very earnestly; “I am unwilling to shock you--that is all. Even this great joy has a dark side to it; my miserable married life casts its shadow on everything that happens to me. Keep secret from everybody the little that I have told you--you will ruin me if you say one word of it to any living creature. I ought not to have opened my heart to you--but how could I help it, when the happiness that is coming to me has come through you? When you say good-bye to me to-day, Amelius, you say good-bye to me for the last time in this house. I am going away. Don’t ask me why--that is one more among the things which I daren’t tell you! You shall hear from me, or see me--I promise that. Give me some safe address to write to; some place where there are no inquisitive women who may open my letter in your absence.” She handed him her pocket-book. Amelius wrote down in it the address of his club. She took his hand. “Think of me kindly,” she said. “And, once more, don’t be afraid of my being deceived. There is a hard part of me still left which keeps me on my guard. The old woman tried, this morning, to make me talk to her about that little fault we know of in my child’s foot. But I thought to myself, ‘If you had taken a proper interest in my poor baby while she was with you, you must sooner or later have found it out.’ Not a word passed my lips. No, no, don’t be anxious when you think of me. I am as sharp as they are; I mean to find out how the man who wrote to me discovered what he knows; he shall satisfy me, I promise you, when I see him or hear from him next. All this is between ourselves strictly, sacredly between ourselves. Say nothing--I know I can trust you. Good-bye, and forgive me for having been so often in your way with Regina. I shall never be in your way again. Marry her, if you think she is good enough for you; I have no more interest now in your being a roving bachelor, meeting with girls here, there, and everywhere. You shall know how it goes on. Oh, I am so happy!” She burst into tears, and signed to Amelius with a wild gesture of treaty to leave her. He pressed her hand in silence, and went out. Almost as the door closed on him, the variable woman changed again. For a while she walked rapidly to and fro, talking to herself. The course of her tears ceased. Her lips closed firmly; her eyes assumed an expression of savage resolve. She sat down at the table and opened her desk. “I’ll read it once more,” she said to herself, “before I seal it up.” She took from her desk a letter of her own writing, and spread it out before her. With her elbows on the table, and her hands clasped fiercely in her hair, she read these lines addressed to her husband:--