et so strangely yesterday. I did not mean to be
unkind. I was grieved to see you so cruelly hurt and lame. I could
not grieve when at last I made you tell me how it happened. I honor
and envy every man of you--every name in those dreadful lists that fill
the papers every day. But I knew about Mr. Raffles, and I did not know
about you, and there was something I longed to tell you about him,
something I could not tell you in a minute in the street, or indeed by
word of mouth at all. That is why I asked you for your address.

"You said I spoke as if I had known Mr. Raffles. Of course I have
often seen him playing cricket, and heard about him and you. But I only
once met him, and that was the night after you and I met last. I have
always supposed that you knew all about our meeting. Yesterday I could
see that you knew nothing. So I have made up my mind to tell you every
word.

"That night--I mean the next night--they were all going out to several
places, but I stayed behind at Palace Gardens. I had gone up to the
drawing-room after dinner, and was just putting on the lights, when in
walked Mr. Raffles from the balcony. I knew him at once, because I
happened to have watched him make his hundred at Lord's only the day
before. He seemed surprised that no one had told me he was there, but
the whole thing was such a surprise that I hardly thought of that. I
am afraid I must say that it was not a very pleasant surprise. I felt
instinctively that he had come from you, and I confess that for the
moment it made me very angry indeed. Then in a breath he assured me
that you knew nothing of his coming, that you would never have allowed
him to come, but that he had taken it upon himself as your intimate
friend and one who would be mine as well. (I said that I would tell
you every word.)

"Well, we stood looking at each other for some time, and I was never
more convinced of anybody's straightness and sincerity; but he was
straight and sincere with me, and true to you that night, whatever he
may have been before and after. So I asked him why he had come, and
what had happened; and he said it was not what had happened, but what
might happen next; so I asked him if he was thinking of you, and he
just nodded, and told me that I knew very well what you had done. But
I began to wonder whether Mr. Raffles himself knew, and I tried to get
him to tell me what you had done, and he said I knew as well as he did
that you were o