Chapter XXVI
I Receive a Letter
My Friend:
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 forever, 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 Jack 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 afterward, she was quite right there. She’d made up her mind to go to their villa 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 determined 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 upon191
