THE TOUCHSTONE
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 arm-chair to the lamp. "I want to look at my book," she said, taking up the first volume of the Letters.
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