Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/158

 you. You mustn't think the way you do. Only remember that your Doris loves you, loves you!

Armitage felt himself torn between the profound tragedy of it and the blinding glory of the revelation. That his eye had seen this letter was plain sacrilege. What to do with it? He could not keep it. He could not tear it up and toss it to the winds—it would be like tearing his heart out. And yet it was his clear duty to destroy anything and everything that might lead to the truth. But he could not destroy this letter, he just could not.

The train was drawing into the Grand Central when he found a solution, the true one. He would put the letter and the confession in one of his lock-boxes at the bank. Some future day, when he and Doris were going down the golden twilight of middle age, he would tell her. It would be impossible to carry such a secret to the grave. Twenty years hence, if he lived, he would tell her. She would understand then. She would forgive. Youth would have been hers in all its glory. He would tell her then—Doris—when the painful recollections of this hour were no more.