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 at an incredible, hardly yet to be realised cost, all my wounds exposed in the market-place.

I wonder why I am recapitulating all this. I think it is to show you I am in no mood for friendship. There are times when I am savage with pain, and times when I am exhausted from it, times when I feel bruised all over, so tender that the touch of a word brings tears, times when my overwhelming pity for myself leaves me incapable of realizing anything beyond my wrongs. I say I have won my freedom, but even this is untrue: at present I have only won six months of probation, during which I am still James Capel's wife. Sometimes I think I shall never live through them, the stain of my connection with him is like mortification.

The prelude played by the Musicians is a prelude to a dream.

And still I am grateful you gave them to me.

Your very truly,

.

When I had read as far as this the codein exerted its influence. My eyelids drooped, I slept and recovered myself. The sense of what I was reading began to escape, I knew it was time to put the bundle away. There were not very many more letters. I put all the papers on the table by my side, then dropped off. Margaret betrayed herself completely in her letters. Gabriel Stanton was still a strange unrealisable figure.