ost's.

The words made her shiver, and she felt as though her hair were moving.
From his face, as she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might
almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the thousands of silent
ones in the labyrinths under her feet, and she alone alive in the midst
of so much death.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and her own voice trembled in spite of
herself.

"It is very like being dead," he answered thoughtfully. "I cannot feel
anything. I cannot understand why any one else should. Everything is the
same to me. The world is a white blank to me, and one place is exactly
like any other place."

"But why? What has happened to you?" asked Francesca.

"You know. You sent me those letters."

"What letters?"

"The package Reanda gave you before he died."

"Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did not know, when I wrote to
you. I remember every word I wrote."

"I know. But I thought that you at least guessed. They were Gloria's
letters to her husband."

"Her old letters, before--" Francesca stopped short.

"No," he answered, with the same unnatural quiet. "All the letters she
wrote him afterwards--when we were together."

"All those letters?" cried Francesca, suddenly understanding. "Oh
no--no! It is not possible! He could not, he would not, have done
anything so horrible."

"He did," said Griggs, calmly. "I had supposed that she loved me. He had
his vengeance. He proved to me that she did not. I hope he is satisfied
with the result. Yes," he continued, after a moment's pause, "it was the
cruelest thing that ever one man did to another. I spent a bad night, I
remember. On the top of the package was the last letter she wrote him,
just before she killed herself. She loathed me, she said, she hated me,
she shivered at my touch. She feared me so that she acted a comedy of
love, in terror of her life, after she had discovered that she hated me.
She need not have been afraid. Why should I have hurt her? In that last
letter, she put her wedding ring with a lock of her hair wound in and
out of it. Reanda knew what he was doing when he sent it to me. Do you
wonder that it has deadened me to everything?"

"Oh, how could he do it? How could he!" Francesca repeated, for the
worst of it all to her was the unutterable cruelty of the man she had
believed so gentle.

"I suppose it was natural," said Griggs. "I loved the woman, and he knew
it. I fancy few men have loved much more sincerely tha