He
felt the beginnings of indignation, yet he looked back
at the letter acquisitively; its interest was intrinsic.
"I feel that I can no longer hold myself in honor," he
read, "if I refrain further from defining the personal
situation between us as it appears to me. That I have
let nearly three weeks go by without doing it you may
put down to my weakness and selfishness, to your own
charm, to what you will; but I shall be glad if you will
not withhold the blame that is due me in the matter, for
I have wronged you, as well as myself, in keeping silence.
"Look, it is all here in a nutshell. _Nothing is changed_.
I have tried to believe otherwise, but the truth is
stronger than my will. My opinion of you is a naked,
uncompromising fact I cannot drape it or adorn it, or
even throw around it a mist of charity. It is unalterably
there, and in any future intercourse with you, such
intercourse as we have had in the past, I should only
dash myself forever against it. I do not clearly see upon
what level you accepted me in the beginning, but I am
absolutely firm in my belief that it was not such as I
would have tolerated if I had known. To-day at all events
I am confronted with the proof that I have not had your
confidence--that you have not thought it worth while to
be single-minded in your relation to me.
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