had crossed the seas to slay--and,
again, by a quick recoil, she recalled his laughter of that morning,
and she said within herself, "If I tell him, he will kill me."

But that thought decided her, and she concluded that tell him she
must, let happen what would. So partly in the strength of her
resolve, and partly out of its womanly weakness, and the fear that
she might return to her first plan at last, she took up her own
letter to Jason, and locked it in a chest. Then taking from the folds
at her breast the letter of Sunlocks to herself, she read it again,
and yet again, for it was the only love letter she had ever received,
and there was a dear delight in the very touch of it. But the thought
of thatand pain in one, she flung herself on her
knees beside him, and enfolded him in her arms. "Michael," she said,
"my love, my darling, my dear kind husband, forgive me, and let me
confess everything. It is true that I was to have married Jason, but
it is not true that I loved him. I esteemed him, for he is of a
manly, noble soul, and after the departure of my father and the death
of my mother, and amid the cruelties of my brothers and your own
long, long silence, I thought to reward him for his great fidelity.
But I loved you, you only, only you, dear Michael, and when your
letter reached me at last I asked him to release me that I might come
to you, and he did so, and I came.