same again. He knew it was good, but he did not send it to her, for no
reason I can discover save that postscripts jarred on him.




CHAPTER IV

GRIZEL OF THE CROOKED SMILE


To expose Tommy for what he was, to appear to be scrupulously fair to
him so that I might really damage him the more, that is what I set out
to do in this book, and always when he seemed to be finding a way of
getting round me (as I had a secret dread he might do) I was to
remember Grizel and be obdurate. But if I have so far got past some of
his virtues without even mentioning them (and I have), I know how many
opportunities for discrediting him have been missed, and that would
not greatly matter, there are so many more to come, if Grizel were on
my side. But she is not; throughout those first chapters a voice has
been crying to me, "Take care; if you hurt him you will hurt me"; and
I know it to be the voice of Grizel, and I seem to see her, rocking
her arms as she used to rock them when excited in the days of her
innocent childhood. "Don't, don't, don't!" she cried at every cruel
word I gave him, and she, to whom it was ever such agony to weep,
dropped a tear upon each word, so that they were obliterated; and
"Surely I knew him best," she said, "and I always loved him"; and she
stood there defending him, with her hand on her heart to conceal the
gaping wound that Tommy had made.