He took the letter.
"If it is from Miss Bell," he said at a suggestion from his conscience, "I fancy, for some reason, it is not pleasant." "No," she replied, "it is not pleasant." He unfolded the letter, recognizing the characteristic broad margins and the repressed rounded perpendicular hand with its supreme effort after significance, and his thought reflected a tinge of his old amused curiosity.
It was only a reflection, and yet it distinctly embodied the idea that he might be on the brink of a further discovery.

He glanced at Janet again: her hands were clasped in her lap, and she was looking straight before her with smilingly grave lips and lowered lids, which nevertheless gave him a glimpse of retrospection.

He felt the beginnings of indignation, yet he looked back at the letter acquisitively; its interest was intrinsic.
"I feel that I can no longer hold myself in honor," he read, "if I refrain further from defining the personal situation between us as it appears to me.

That I have let nearly three weeks go by without doing it you may put down to my weakness and selfishness, to your own charm, to what you will; but I shall be glad if you will not withhold the blame that is due me in the matter, for I have wronged you, as well as myself, in keeping silence.
"Look, it is all here in a nutshell.

_Nothing is changed_.
I have tried to believe otherwise, but the truth is stronger than my will.