alive."

More to give herself time to think than in any hope of moving him, she
began to plead:

"Let me have them, Victor--let me go."

Smiling darkly, he shook his head.

"The letters mean nothing to you. What good--?"

He interrupted impatiently: "I shall publish them."

"Impossible--!"

"But I shall."

Aghast, she protested: "You can't mean that!"

"Why not? The world shall know your true reason for leaving me--that you
were the mistress of another man--and who that man was!"

Staring, she uttered in a low voice: "Never!"

"Or," he amended, deliberately, "you may keep them, burn them, do what you
will with them--on fair terms--_my_ terms."

She said nothing, but her dilate eyes held fixedly to his. He moved a pace
or two nearer, his voice dropped to a lower key, the light she had learned
to loathe flickered in the depths of his eyes.