“The idea!” he exclaimed, in pretended wrath. “Never heard of such
a person! What impudence!”
He tossed the letter over to her without curiosity, and took up
Quinny’s letter for a more careful perusal. The echoes of the old
world brought a strange fluttering to his heart. He wondered what
they, the old friends, believed had happened to him all this time,
and he wondered, looking out the doorway with a curious quivering
smile, what they would say when they knew that he had not gone
under, that he had won his fight and was coming back to his own.
He took a long breath, and there was a new light in his eyes as he
turned. Inga was at the fireplace, her head resting on her hand,
staring into the flames which were licking up the letter she had
tossed there.
“What was your letter?” he said, noticing the immobility of her
attitude.
“Nothing--a notice from a publisher, that’s all.”
He came closer with a sudden, leaping jealousy which he would have
been at a loss to justify.
“Is that true?” he said slowly.
She nodded, looking at the burning, twisted mass.
“Inga, tell me the truth!” he said, in a voice he had never used
before with her. She raised her head, met his burning eyes, and
answered steadily:
“Why, that was all.”
In the embers, the flame died down. He knew that she had lied to
save him pain. In a sudden disgust at this outer world which still
had power to throw its disturbing shadow across their Eden, he went
to the table and took up the whole correspondence and flung it into
the coals.
“Curse them! I wish they’d leave me alone!”
Then he sat down and held his head in his hands for fear of jumping
up, of seizing her and turning her to his eyes, and forcing her to
admit that what lay now in ashes had been a letter from out the
ashes of the past, from that other man, whom he could never see or
comprehend, but who haunted his days and stood always between him
and the sun of unconscious happiness.
“I hate letters!” she burst out as suddenly, and went precipitately
out of the door and flying over the cliffs.
He made no move to follow, but sat there grimly, staring into the
fire, and what he thought of darkly was not alone the past but of
what lay ahead.