“You will know all when you get this. Nothing that I can say will move Bella. She has gone out to give herself up. I am tired out with struggling.

    “You will know now that I deceived you, that where you gave me trust I repaid you with lies. It will seem, perhaps, indefensible to you, but I should like, before I go out of your life for ever, to show you just how it all came about. If I knew that you forgave me, it would make life easier for me. It wasn’t for myself I did it—that’s the only thing I can put forward to say for myself.

    “I’ll begin from the day I met you in the boat train from Paris. I was uneasy then about Bella. She was just desperate about Jack¹ Renauld, she’d have lain down on the ground for him to walk on, and when he began to change, and to stop writing so often, she began getting in a state. She got it into her head that he was keen on another girl—and of course, as it turned out afterwards, she was quite right there. She’d made up her mind to go to their Villa² at Merlinville, and try and see Jack. She knew I was against it, and tried to give me the slip. I found she was not on the train at Calais, and determined³ I would not go on to England without her. I’d an uneasy feeling that something awful was going to happen if I couldn’t prevent it.

    “I met the next train from Paris. She was on it, and set upon going out then and there to Merlinville. I argued with her for all I was worth, but it wasn’t any good. She was all strung up and set upon having her own way. Well, I washed my hands of it. I’d done all I could! It was getting late. I went to an hotel, and Bella started for Merlinville. I still couldn’t shake off my feeling of what the books call ‘impending disaster.’

    “The next day came—but no Bella. She’d made a date with me to meet at the hotel, but she didn’t keep it. No sign of her all day. I got more and more anxious. Then came an evening paper with the news.

    “It was awful! I couldn’t be sure, of course—but I was terribly afraid. I figured it out that Bella had met Papa Renauld and told him about her and Jack, and that he’d insulted her or something like that. We’ve both got terribly quick tempers.

    “Then all the masked foreigner business came out, and I began to feel more at ease. But it still worried me that Bella hadn’t kept her date with me.

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