Chapter XIV: A Letter

THEY had put out the lights. Even the night-light at the far end of the hall was turned low, but sentences wrote themselves out on the ceiling; a pause, then a sentence; a pause, then another.

‘_... Could it have been the wine she gave us at supper--the
barefooted old woman? I was so very thirsty!... I can’t understand. I
can’t believe, yet I distinctly remember insisting that I ride that
horse.... I was so horribly frightened--except when I was near you....
I couldn’t help seeing how the others turned to you.... Won’t you
please believe I never acted like that before?... It was because you
were so firm--that I could breathe better where you were.... And in
the car--it was like hanging on a cross, wasn’t it?... Oh, won’t you
get word to me that you forgive?_’

Such a stillness around each sentence.