I know I am running away, a cowardly thing to do, but perhaps I shall find courage eventually? Or perhaps find eternal peace at last? I do not try to apologize in this letter. I have tried to do that already, words are inadequate and hurt more than they heal sometimes. I have hurt you brutally, this I also know, and it is mostly because of that fact that I now have cracked. I can’t bear the sad eyes, the uncomplaining love, the bewilderment. They haunt me and taunt me to the point of madness. Forgive me, if you can, and remember that I did love you most desperately. The error which we made, or I made, scars one for life.

I am sorry.
Goodbye.

It was simply signed with the initial ‘J.’

A sad, weak, ill-written letter. How now to face Florence? The confession that there was no marriage, ‘Only in our own, foolish, childish minds’, posed no great problem. I was pretty certain that her vigorous mother would have told her already that I had been informed, but what did he mean by ‘my “punishment”’? What was that? What punishment did they merit, these two cooing doves, these foolish and childish creatures, which was so severe that it had, apparently, ruined their lives?

The room had grown dark. I folded the blue paper and replaced it in its envelope, sat on the edge of my high, bumpy bed, looked through the window at the clouding sky and wondered why on earth he should have taken the trouble, and such infinite care, to involve me in this unhappy history.

There was really no need: we had never been close, and had he just faded into his ‘sweet oblivion’, as he called it in my letter, I doubt I’d ever have given it a thought. People do just melt away, it happens all the time. It wouldn’t have mattered a tinker’s gob to me.

But by mailing me the key to his house he had deliberately implicated me in the ashes and residuals of his wretched life, and I’d obviously fallen for the bait and swallowed the hook.

Curiosity kills the cat.

I really had no wish to rake about in the debris of his life, at this moment. I had enough on my own plate without scraping up his leavings. All my own fault, of course. What does one do when one is sent the key to someone’s front door?