As to the further letters, all they proved was that Frank had first met
"Janey Cartwright" over some law business of hers, connected--even Agnes
saw the irony of it--in some shameful way with another man; for, tied
together, were a few notes signed with the writer's full name, of which
the first began:

    Dear Mr. Barlow:
        Forgive me for writing to your private address
        [etc., etc.]. The ten days that followed her discovery had seared Agnes's soul. Frank
had been so dreadfully affectionate. He had pretended--she felt sure it
was all pretence--to be so glad to see her again, though sometimes she
caught him looking at her with cowed, miserable eyes. More than once he had asked her solicitously if she felt ill, and she
had said yes, she did feel ill, and the time at the seaside had not done
her any good. And then, on the last of those terrible ten days, Gerald Ferrier had
come down to Summerfield, and both she and Frank had pressed him to stay
on to dinner. He had done so, though aware that something was wrong, and
he had been extraordinarily kind, sympathetic, unquestioning. But as he
was leaving he had said a word to his host: "I feel worried about Mrs.
Barlow"--Agnes had heard him through the window. "She doesn't look the
thing, somehow! How would it be if I asked her to go with me to a
private view? It might cheer her up, and perhaps she would lunch with me
afterwards?" Frank had eagerly assented. Since then Agnes had gone up to London, if not every day, very nearly
every day, and Mr. Ferrier had done his best, without much success, to
"cheer her up." Though they soon became more intimate than they had ever been, Agnes
never told Ferrier what it was that had turned her from a happy,
unquestioning child into a miserable woman; but, of course, he guessed. And gradually Frank also had come to know that she knew, and, man-like,
he spent less and less time in his now uncomfortable home. He would go
away in the morning an hour earlier than usual, and then, under pretext
of business keeping him late at the office, he would come back after
having dined, doubtless with "Janey," in town. Soon Agnes began to draw a terrible comparison between these two
men--between the husband who had all she had of heart, and the friend
whom she now acknowledged to herself--for hypocrisy had fallen away from
her--had lived only for her, and for the hours they were able to spend
together, during two long years, and yet who had never told her of his
love, or tried to disturb her trust in Frank. Yes, Gerald Ferrier was all that was noble--Frank Barlow all that was
ignoble. So she told herself with trembling lip a dozen times a day,
taking fierce comfort in the knowledge that Ferrier was noble. But she
was destined even to lose that comfort; for one day, a week before the
day when we find her walking to Summerfield station, Ferrier's nobility,
or what poor Agnes took to be such, suddenly broke down. They had been walking together in Battersea Park, and, after one of
those long silences which bespeak true intimacy between a man and a
woman, he had asked her if she would come back to his rooms--for tea. She had shaken her head smilingly. And then he had turned on her with a
torrent of impetuous, burning words--words of ardent love, of anguished
longing, of eager pleading. And Agnes had been frightened, fascinated,
allured. And that had not been all. More quietly he had gone on to speak as if the code of morality in which
his friend had been bred, and which had hitherto so entirely satisfied
her, was, after all, nothing but a narrow counsel of perfection, suited
to those who were sheltered and happy, but wretchedly inadequate to meet
the needs of the greater number of human beings who are, as Agnes now
was, humiliated and miserable. His words had found an echo in her sore
heart, but she had not let him see how much they moved her. On the
contrary, she had rebuked him, and for the first time they had
quarrelled. "If you ever speak to me like that again," she had said coldly, "I will
not come again." And once more he had turned on her violently. "I think you had better
not come again! I am but a man after all!" They parted enemies; but the same night Ferrier wrote Agnes a very
piteous letter asking pardon on his knees for having spoken as he had
done. And his letter moved her to the heart. Her own deep misery--never
for one moment did she forget Frank, and Frank's treachery--made her
understand the torment that Ferrier was going through. For the first time she realized, what so few of her kind ever realize,
that it is a mean thing to take everything and give nothing in exchange. And gradually, as her long, solitary hours wore themselves away, Agnes
came to believe that if she did what she now knew Ferrier desired her to
do,--if, casting the past behind her, she started a new life with
him--she would not only be doing a generous thing by the man who had
loved her silently and faithfully for so long, but she would also be
punishing Frank--hurting him in his honour, as he had hurt her in hers. And then the stars that fight in their courses for those lovers who are
also poets fought for Ferrier. The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous
letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill to
write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling
very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which
had been vouchsafed to him. In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door
of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had
slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him
peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe
must never come to him through her. The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision
brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a
pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank. For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel
and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her
husband thought to purchase her forgiveness? If Ferrier's letter had never been written, if Frank's gift had never
been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we
now find her doing--hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier's
dream come true. *       *       *       *       *

At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield. One of her father's many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a
season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a
ticket at the booking-office instead. The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind
that pretty Mrs. Barlow--she wore to-day a curiously thick veil--had a
friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and
flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her
face?