usual leaving room for a multiplication of blunders, he added,
with increased indifference, "I simply can't see what you can find
to interest you in such a book."

She seemed to consider this intently. "You've read it, then?"

"I glanced at it--I never read such things."

"Is it true that she didn't wish the letters to be published?"

Glennard felt the sudden dizziness of the mountaineer on a narrow
ledge, and with it the sense that he was lost if he looked more
than a step ahead.

"I'm sure I don't know," he said; then, summoning a smile, he
passed his hand through her arm. "I didn't have tea at the
Dreshams, you know; won't you give me some now?" he suggested.

That evening Glennard, under pretext of work to be done, shut
himself into the small study opening off the drawing-room. As he
gathered up his papers he said to his wife: "You're not going to
sit indoors on such a night as this? I'll join you presently
outside."

But she had drawn her armchair to the lamp. "I want to look at my
book," she said, taking up the first volume of the "Letters."

Glennard, with a shrug, withdrew into the study. "I'm going to
shut the door; I want to be quiet," he explained from the
threshold; and she nodded without lifting her eyes from the book.