"Of course it occurred to me. Haven't you heard from him?"
"I have. But hardly in time for him to do anything."
He reflected. Jewdwine had written; therefore his intentions had been
good. But he had delayed considerably in writing; evidently, then, he
had been embarrassed. He had not mentioned that he had heard from him;
and why shouldn't he have mentioned it? Oh, well--after all, why
should he? At the back of his mind there had crawled a wriggling,
worm-like suspicion of Jewdwine. He saw it wriggling and stamped on it
instantly.
There were signs of acute anxiety on Miss Harden's face. It was as if
she implored him to say something consoling about Jewdwine, something
that would make him pure in her troubled sight. A light dawned on him.
"Did you write to him?" she asked.
He saw what she wanted him to say, and he said it. "Yes, I wrote. But
I suppose I did it too late, like everything else I've done."
He had told the truth, but not the whole truth, which would have been
damaging to Jewdwine. To deny altogether that he had written would
have been a clumsy and unnecessary falsehood, easily detected.
Something more masterly was required of him, and he achieved it
without an instant's hesitation, and with his eyes open to the
consequences. He knew that he was deliberately suppressing the one
detail that proved his own innocence. But as their eyes met he saw
that she knew it, too; that she divined him through the web that
wrapped him round.
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