e truth. His manner and speech were that of an honest
man.

Within myself I could but admit it. Yet I loved Sylvia. Why, I cannot
tell. How can a man tell why he loves? First love is more than the
mere awakening of a passion: it is transition to another state of
being. When it is born the man is new-made.

Yet, as the spring days passed, I lived in suspicion and wonder, ever
mystified, ever apprehensive.

Each morning I looked eagerly for a letter from her, yet each morning
I was disappointed.

It seemed true, as Shuttleworth had said, that an open gulf lay
between us.

Where was she, I wondered? I dared not write to Gardone, as she had
begged me not to do so. She had left there, no doubt, for was she not
a constant wanderer? Was not her stout, bald-headed father the modern
incarnation of the Wandering Jew?

May lengthened into June, with its usual society functions and all the
wild gaiety of the London season. The Derby passed and Ascot came,
the Park was full every day, theatres and clubs were crowded, and the
hotels overflowed with Americans and country cousins. I had many
invitations, but accepted few. Somehow, my careless cosmopolitanism
had left me. I had become a changed man.

And if I were to believe the woman who had come so strangely and so
suddenly into my life, I was a marked man also.

Disturbing thoughts often arose within me in the silence of the night,
but, laughing at them, I crushed them down. What had I possibly to
fear? I had no enemy that I was aware of. The whole suggestion seemed
so utterly absurd and far-fetched.

Jack Marlowe came back from Denmark hale and hearty, and more than
once I was sorely tempted to explain to him the whole situation. Only
I feared he would jeer at me as a love-sick idiot.

What was the secret held by that grey-faced country parson? Whatever
it might be, it was no ordinary one. He had spoken of the seal of The
Confessional. What sin had Sylvia Pennington confessed to him?

Day after day, as I sat in my den at Wilton Street smoking moodily and
thinking, I tried vainly to imagine what cardinal sin she could have
committed. My sole thoughts were of her, and my all-consuming
eagerness was to meet her again.

On the night of the twentieth of June--I remember the date well
because the Gold Cup had been run that afternoon--I had come in from
supper at the Ritz about a quarter to one, and retired to bed. I
suppose I must have turned in about half-an-hour, when th