With a trembling kiss and a little choking prayer she broke the seal at
last, and as the letter came rustling out of the envelope she glanced at
the closing lines: "Your Faithful Husband."
She caught her breath and waited a moment, tingling all over. Then she
unfolded the paper and read:-
"DEAREST,--A telegram from Rome, published in the Paris newspapers
this morning, reports the trial and death of Bruno. To say that I
am shocked is to say little. I am shaken to my foundations. My
heart is bursting and my hand can with difficulty hold the pen.
"The news first reached me last evening, when I was in a
restaurant with a group of journalists. We were at dinner, but I
was compelled to rise and return to my lodgings. I must have been
almost in delirium the whole night long. More than once I started
from my sleep with the certainty that I heard Bruno's voice
calling to me. Once I went to the window and looked out into the
silent street. And yet I knew all the time that my poor friend lay
dead in prison.
"Poor Bruno! I do not hold with suicide under any circumstances. A
man's life does not belong to himself. Each of us is a soldier,
and no sentinel ought to kill himself at his post. Who knows what
the next turn of the battle will be? It is our duty to the General
to see the fight out. But when the sentinel dies rather than pass
a false watchword, suicide is sacrifice, death is victory, and God
takes His martyr under the wings of His mercy.
"The poor fellow died believing I had been false to him! I knew
him for eight years, and during that time he was more faithful to
me than my shadow. He was the bravest, staunchest friend man ever
had. And now he has left me, thinking I have wronged him at the
last. Oh, my brother, do you not know the truth at last? In the
world to which you are gone, does no heavenly voice tell you? Does
not death reveal everything? Can you not look down and see all,
tearing away the veil that clouded your vision here below? Is it
only vouchsafed to him who remains on earth to know that he was
true to the love you bore him? God forbid it! It cannot, cannot
be.
"Dearest, I came to Paris unexpectedly ten days ago...."
Roma lifted her swimming eyes. "Then he hasn't received it," she
thought.