'Our year of probation'-- she called it that.

Dear, dear, what a poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! She was sworn to me, bound to me, wanted a year in which to have her fling before she settled down, and she threw me over--like that." He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the fire, threw it in, and watched it burn.
"I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly now.

"A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute.

It's a terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman.

If anything had happened to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor all the King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply.