The other letter made a bulky package. She opened it and saw many sheets
of round unformed handwriting. At the top of the first page some other
hand had written something minutely in pencil: Julian’s hand. She read:
You asked me for news of Mariella. Here it is. I think you guessed
what I was neither perspicacious nor interested enough to suspect;
or did even she fall into the common habit of “telling Judith?”
There is something about this document which has made me feel far
from flattered in my vanity or elevated in my self-esteem. What I
send you is for you and no one else. After you have read it destroy
it. You are discreet; and for some reason you care what becomes of
us; and, last but not least, you have the artistic conscience, a
sense of dramatic values. It seems to me this rounds us off nicely.
Tchehov? Turgenev?