id I did cry; and that was the
end. He pretended not to notice anything, and then in an
instant he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred
horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me more than
all the rest. I remember that I wanted to shake hands at the
end. But Mr. Raffles only shook his head, and for one instant
his face was as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of
the time. Then he went as he had come, in his own dreadful
way, and not a soul in the house knew that he had been. And
even you were never told!

"I didn't mean to write all this about your own friend, whom
you knew so much better yourself, yet you see that even you
did not know how nobly he tried to undo the wrong he had done
you; and now I think I know why he kept it to himself. It is
fearfully late--or early--I seem to have been writing all
night--and I will explain the matter in the fewest words. I
promised Mr. Raffles that I would write to you, Harry, and
see you if I could. Well, I did write, and I did mean to see
you, but I never had an answer to what I wrote. It was only
one line, and I have long known you never received it. I
could not bring myself to write more, and even those few
words were merely slipped into one of the books which you had
given me. Years afterward these books, with my name in them,
must have been found in your rooms; at any rate they were
returned to me by somebody; and you could never have opened
them, for there was my line where I had left it. Of course
you had never seen it, and that was all my fault. But it was
too late to write again. Mr. Raffles was supposed to have
been drowned, and everything was known about you both. But I
still kept my own independent knowledge to myself; to this
day, no one else knows that you were one of the two in Palace
Gardens; and I still blame myself more than you may think for
nearly everything that has happened since.

"You said yesterday that your going to the war and getting
wounded wiped out nothing that had gone before. I hope you
are not growing morbid about the past. It is not for me to
condone it, and yet I know that Mr. Raffles was what he was
because he loved danger and adventure, and that you were what
you were because you loved Mr. Raffles. But, even admitting
it was all as bad as bad could be, he is d