THE SECOND BEST
THE letter was brief and abrupt.
"I am in London. I have just come back from Jamaica. Will you come and see me? I can be in at any time you appoint."
There was no signature, but he knew the handwriting well enough. The letter came to him by the morning post, sandwiched between his tailor's bill and a catalogue of Rare and Choice Editions.
He read it twice. Then he got up from the breakfast-table, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of letters and a photograph.
"I ought to have burned them long ago," he said; "I'll burn them now." He did burn them but first he read them through, and as he read them he sighed, more than once. They were passionate, pretty letters,—the phrases simply turned, the endearments delicately chosen. They breathed of love and constancy and faith, a faith
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