She stood as though too discouraged to continue, too listless to go away. But when, in the midst of his sorting, Napier glanced at her, he discovered no listlessness in the eyes that kept tally of the letters he was dealing out. What earthly good does it do her to read the outsides of our envelopes? he wondered.
"I've been unhappy," she went on, "most unhappy under my enforced silence. I've wanted so much that _you_ anyhow should know the truth."
"I don't know why I especially--" he began.
"No, no, no!" she said a little wildly, in spite of the hushed softness of her tone, "you don't know. And it's a good thing--a good thing you don't. But I'm too unhappy under the innocent little deceit that's been forced on me. You see, we had quarreled, the Pforzheims and I. That is, _they_ quarreled. They each wanted to marry me. Oh, it was dreadful! They wanted to fight a duel...."
"About...?" Napier laid a long official envelope on the top of Sir William's pile.
"About me," she said with lowered eyes. "That was why I went to America. I couldn't bear it. I said: 'We are strangers from this day!' And so,"--she pressed her handkerchief again to her lips--"and so we met like that. I told them I wouldn't stay here an hour if they swerved a hair's breath from the role of strangers. Now,"--her voice altered suddenly as though out of weariness after immense effort--"now you know."
Napier took out the last letters. "I expect," he said kindly, "it's been hard enough for you--at times."
"The strain is frightful." She swallowed and began again. "I--Maybe you've noticed.... They will write to me from time to time."
She waited. Napier's face as blank as the new sheet of blotting paper in front of the great presentation ink-stand.
"Well, is it my fault?" she demanded. "I've tried to make them see what an equivocal position it puts me in, how unfair--" her face yearned for sympathy.
"It's too nerve-racking," she said with increasing agitation. "Each one thinks the other has got over that old madness. But the letters they write me...! _Frantic!_" She came closer still. She laid her hand on Napier's sleeve. "Do you know, sometimes I'm afraid...." She drew back, as a step sounded on the gravel.
"The Pforzheims!" Napier said to himself.