Letters" and Glennard, hearing his wife questioned as to her
absence, felt himself miserably wishing that she had gone, rather
than that her staying away should have been remarked. He was
rapidly losing all sense of proportion where the "Letters" were
concerned. He could no longer hear them mentioned without
suspecting a purpose in the allusion; he even yielded himself for
a moment to the extravagance of imagining that Mrs. Dresham, whom
he disliked, had organized the reading in the hope of making him
betray himself--for he was already sure that Dresham had divined
his share in the transaction.

The attempt to keep a smooth surface on this inner tumult was as
endless and unavailing as efforts made in a nightmare. He lost
all sense of what he was saying to his neighbors and once when he
looked up his wife's glance struck him cold.

She sat nearly opposite him, at Flamel's side, and it appeared to
Glennard that they had built about themselves one of those airy
barriers of talk behind which two people can say what they please.
While the reading was discussed they were silent. Their silence
seemed to Glennard almost cynical--it stripped the last disguise
from their complicity. A throb of anger rose in him, but suddenly
it fell, and he felt, with a curious sense of relief, that at
bottom he no longer cared whether Flamel had told his wife or not.
The assumption that Flamel knew about the letters had become a
fact to Glennard; and it now seemed to him better that Alexa
should know too.

He was frightened at first by the discovery of his own
indifference. The last barriers of his will seemed to be breaking