He read the bitter words again, hoping their sharp edge would make a wound of self-respect in the consciousness they had benumbed. But he tried in vain to hurt his pride, or by any fresh vexation to escape from the torment of his thoughts. Earth is jealous of its anodynes, even of pain that brings oblivion or of death that means release. He refolded the letter and returned it to his pocket, knowing that in half an hour he would be reading it again. Meanwhile a new impulse moved him. Leaning forward, he slid back a secret door in the top of his desk, and took from the space behind it a bundle of letters. They were in envelopes of almost every hue and shape, but all were directed by the same hand, in a vain weak sprawling character. Terence drew the packet towards him, and set his fingers on the string. Then with a shudder he pushed it from him, and thrust his face into his hands. Under those harlequin covers were hidden the one chance of happiness for his life, and the reputation of a woman. He could make them yield which of the two he chose; but the other must be destroyed. II It was nearly two years since he had first seen his name written in that hand, a very short while after he had made acquaintance with the writer. She had stirred his curiosity from the moment he met her; partly by something tragic in her beauty, which was indubitable; partly by some quality which he found repellent even in her attraction. She bore a well known name, but her husband's estates were encumbered; every place he had was let, and they entertained but little. Terence had known the latter slightly for some years, and disliked him extremely. He was a man with a predilection for any sport in which something suffered, provided it could be followed in comfort; and he openly lamented having married for love--as he termed it--instead of putting up his peerage to the bidding of the States. Terence had pitied any one who might have to do with him, and was thus already at a sympathetic angle on meeting his wife. She surprised him by her detachment from the world in which she lived. She viewed it with vague eyes, knowing of its happenings only from what was told her, and divining neither their probability nor their consequence. Nothing, dropped into her mind, seemed to fructify: it lay there like seed upon a rock. To Terence, whose chief resource was his ignorance, such detachment appeared incredible. He thought her beauty of itself would have proved a sufficient link with life, or with at least the deadlier forms of it which wear the name in London. A woman with her eyes was generally enabled to foresee some of the surprises in the Book of Judgment. Men looked to that. But it was clear to Terence that she foresaw nothing. If corruption had approached her, it had failed to get not a hearing only, but a seeing. Whatever place there might be for it in her heart, there was plainly none in her intelligence: she did not even know it by sight.