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"You shall be troubled no more with Winifrid Hurtle. " So Mrs. Hurtle had said, speaking in perfect good faith to the man whom she had come to England with the view of marrying. And then when he had said goodbye to her, putting out his hand to take hers for the last time, she declined that. "Nay," she had said; "this parting will bear no farewell. "
Having left her after that fashion Paul Montague could not return home with very high spirits. Had she insisted on his taking that letter with the threat of the horsewhip as the letter which she intended to write to him -- that letter which she had shown him, owning it to be the ebullition of her uncontrolled passion, and had then destroyed -- he might at any rate have consoled himself with thinking that, however badly he might have behaved, her conduct had been worse than his. He could have made himself warm and comfortable with anger, and could have assured himself that under any circumstances he must be right to escape from the clutches of a wild cat such as that. But at the last moment she had shown that she was no wild cat to him. She had melted, and become soft and womanly. In her softness she had been exquisitely beautiful; and as he returned home he was sad and dissatisfied with himself.