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TWILIGHT
A small number of letters, not more than fifteen or sixteen in all, a bound diary, a very cursory glance at which showed me the disingenuousness, and half a dozen pages of MS. notes or chapter headings with several trial titles, " Between the Nisi and the Absolute," " Publisher and Sinner," headed two separate pages. " The Story of an Unhappy Woman " the third. The notes were all in the first person, and I should have known them anywhere for Margaret Capel's.
Small as the whole cache was, I did not think it possible I could get through it all that night. Neither did it seem possible to get out of bed again. The papers must remain where they were, or underneath my pillow. I should be strong enough, I hoped, by the morning to put up with or confront any wrath or argument Benham would advance.
I had got up because I chose. That was the beginning and end of it. She must learn to put up with my ways, or I with a change of nurse.
The letters were in an elastic band, without envelopes, labelled and numbered. Margaret's were on paper of a light mauve, with lines, like foreign paper. Her handwriting, masculine and square, was not very readable. She rarely dotted an i or crossed a t, used the Greek e and many ellipses. Gabriel's letters were as easy to read as print. It was a pity therefore that hers were so much longer
