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your consent to our marriage sprung from your untried ignorance, and that you were robbed of your youth, I offer you such freedom as can still be yours, uncomplainingly, ungrudgingly. Although in some ways you are a child still, I trust you unhesitatingly, as I would trust one of God's angels. I know the pure uprightness of your nature. I have already told you that everything you can need shall be at your disposal. I am in hopes that you will feel that I would be to you something more than husband or lover—your most faithful friend.

"All this I say only to set your mind at rest, to free you from self-reproach. But if, my wife, if your heart should desire to cling to me from deliberate choice—then—if ever the love of man compassed the life of woman, my love shall compass yours. I fear to urge you, to put before you the selfishness of my great desire.

"I send you back a part of the lavender, a renewal of my faith until the days or years of our separation are ended, for that in the end you will come back to me I feel assured."

Here the letter broke off suddenly, evidently through some interruption. Below had been added in pencil, now scarcely legible:—

"Oh, my love, think well—something more than life is at stake."

The whole was finely and closely written; the sheet was large and folded in three, the fourth side was blank. Elsa saw plainly enough how it had happened, and in the hurry of the last hours among the numberless interruptions and distractions of the office, the folded sheet, had been placed in the wrong envelope. She remembered that the lavender had been separately inclosed.

Perhaps impotent grief at the wasted years, the loss of joy, was the strongest feeling just at first; then a sense of wonder at the great, unselfish heart that had been so wronged, with sorrow and tender pity for the pain it must have laid at her door.

Was it possible that its fidelity had survived even the needless cruelty of her farewell, the silence of these five long years? Five long years—how could she approach him, and tell him all the truth, not knowing if she would be welcome? She tried to form the words of a letter, but it seemed full of bald surprise. They had grown strange to each other, and their wooing must begin again; she could not tell him now that she had loved him all along.

Then an idea came to her. She would weave their story, his and hers, into a tale and send it to him. He would surely read it when he saw the writing, and the signature—Elsa Vane.

In this way she would discover his feeling towards her; if he let it pass unheeded, unanswered, she would know———

And if—but here she could not follow out the conclusions, for her heart trembled. She went back to her writing-table and began to write; she wrote far into the night, until indeed the winter's day was near breaking, no longer hesitant for words or for matter. And when her task was done, she laid down for an hour of happy dreams, with Tom's letter beneath her pillow.

She herself took the MS. to the office on the following morning, and saw it carried into his room.

She had addressed it to him personally, and put her own name and address on the outside of the fly-leaf. She had also added a few lines in which she spoke of herself as "the writer," and begged him to give the MS. his personal attention. She felt she could do no more—only wait. At any rate, she would have the right to ask for the return of the MS., and in that way she would be assured. She had tried to prepare herself for days of uncertainty, but wondered how she would bear them before the first hours of the afternoon were over.

She walked the room restlessly, like a caged creature, starting at every sound, and feeling a sense of despair as every half hour chimed softly by her little clock. The dinner, which she had made some pretence of eating, had been carried away, and she had gathered herself over the fire. She knew that Mrs. Crawley would not trouble her to-night, when the servant came to say a gentleman wished to see her.

It was over then. She had heard no summons, nothing, but there was the hasty step upon the stair, and he was in the room-and they were alone.

"Elsa—Elsa—do you mean to say I did that idiotic thing?"

"Indeed then, Tom, you did."

But he could hardly have heard the words, although the whisper was not far away.

Tom Vane had traced his wife to Paris. He resented bitterly what appeared mere groundless obstinacy and contempt, both of himself and all common sense. Partly in anger, and partly because he thought that through his silence she would the more quickly realize her folly, he refrained from all insistence of his desire for her greater