Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/405

Rh Again, for an instant, I deliberated. "The offer I propose to make you gives me the right to put you a question remarkably direct. Are you still engaged to Miss Anvoy?"

"No, I'm not," he slowly brought out. "But we're perfectly good friends."

"Such good friends that you will again become prospective husband and wife if the obstacle in your path be removed?"

"Removed?" Gravener vaguely repeated.

"If I give Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of she may drop her project."

"Then for God's sake give it!"

"I'll do so if you're ready to assure me that her dropping it would now presumably bring about your marriage."

"I'd marry her the next day!" my visitor cried.

"Yes, but would she marry you? What I ask of you of course is nothing less than your word of honour as to your conviction of this. If you give it me," I said, "I'll place the letter in her hand to-day."

Gravener took up his hat; turning it mechanically round, he stood looking a moment hard at its unruffled perfection. Then, very angrily, honestly and gallantly: "Place it in hell!" he broke out; with which he clapped the hat on his head and left me.

"Will you read it or not?" I said to Ruth Anvoy, at Wimbledon, when I had told her the story of Mrs. Saltram's visit. She reflected for a period which was probably of the briefest, but which was long enough to make me nervous. "Have you brought it with you?"

"No indeed. It's at home, locked up."

There was another great silence, and then she said: "Go back and destroy it."

I went back, but I didn't destroy it till after Saltram's death, Rh