She looked as if she found me unexpectedly calm. “He stole
_letters_!”
She couldn’t know my reasons for a calmness after all pretty
shallow; so I showed them off as I might. “I hope then it was to
more purpose than in this case! The note, at any rate, that I put on
the table yesterday,” I pursued, “will have given him so scant an
advantage--for it contained only the bare demand for an interview--that
he is already much ashamed of having gone so far for so little, and
that what he had on his mind last evening was precisely the need of
confession.” I seemed to myself, for the instant, to have mastered
it, to see it all. “Leave us, leave us”--I was already, at the
door, hurrying her off. “I’ll get it out of him. He’ll meet
me--he’ll confess. If he confesses, he’s saved. And if he’s
saved----”
“Then _you_ are?” The dear woman kissed me on this, and I took her
farewell. “I’ll save you without him!” she cried as she went.