Always these same gray envelopes. I’ve kept count of them because after each one he has been like a man who has had some dreadful shock. It takes him hours to shake off their effect. I’ve told him so. I’ve told him I must know from whom they come, because I can see they’re killing him. He won’t answer my questions; he says he can’t tell me anything about the letters; but last night he promised to go away with me—to get away from them.”

            Mrs. Ashby, with shaking steps, had gone to one of the armchairs and sat down in it, her head drooping forward on her breast. “Ah,” she murmured.

            “So now you understand—”

            “Did he tell you it was to get away from them?”

            “He said, to get away—to get away. He was sobbing so that he could hardly speak. But I told him I knew that was why.”

            “And what did he say?”

            “He took me in his arms and said he’d go wherever I wanted.”

            “Ah, thank God!” said Mrs. Ashby. There was a silence, during which she continued to sit with bowed head, and eyes averted from her daughter-in-law. At last she looked up and spoke. “Are you sure there have been as many as nine?”

            “Perfectly. This is the ninth. I’ve kept count.”

            “And he has absolutely refused to explain?”

            “Absolutely.”

            Mrs. Ashby spoke through pale contracted lips. “When did they begin to come? Do you remember?”

            Charlotte laughed again. “Remember? The first one came the night we got back from our honeymoon.”

            “All that time?” Mrs. Ashby lifted her head and spoke with sudden energy. “Then—Yes, open it.”

            The words were so unexpected that Charlotte felt the blood in her temples, and her hands began to tremble again. She tried to slip her finger under the flap of the envelope, but it was so tightly stuck that she had to hunt on her husband’s writing table for his ivory letter-opener. As she pushed about the familiar objects his own hands had so lately touched, they sent through her the icy chill emanating from the little personal effects of someone newly dead. In the deep silence of the room the tearing of the paper as she slit the envelope sounded like a human cry. She drew out the sheet and carried it to the lamp.

            “Well?” Mrs. Ashby asked below her breath.

            Charlotte did not move or answer. She was bending over the page with wrinkled brows, holding it nearer and nearer to the light. Her sight must be blurred, or else dazzled by the reflection of the lamplight on the smooth surface of the paper, for, strain her eyes as she would, she could discern only a few faint strokes, so faint and faltering as to be nearly undecipherable.

            “I can’t make it out,” she said.

            “What do you mean, dear?”

            “The writing’s too indistinct… Wait.”

            She went back to the table and, sitting down close to Kenneth’s reading lamp, slipped the letter under a magnifying glass. All this time she was aware that her mother-in-law was watching her intently.

            “Well?” Mrs. Ashby breathed.

            “Well, it’s no clearer. I can’t read it.”

            “You mean the paper is an absolute blank?”

            “No, not quite. There is writing on it. I can make out something like ‘mine’—oh, and ‘come’. It might be ‘come’.”

            Mrs. Ashby stood up abruptly. Her face was even paler than before.