beside her cot. Desire
withdrew her attention from the leaves and picked it up. With a little
thrill she saw that Li Ho had been right. It was her own name which was
written across the envelope ...

Her own name, faded yet clear on a wrinkled envelope yellowed at the
edges. The seal of the envelope had been broken....

Sometime in her childhood Desire must have seen her mother's writing.
Conscious memory of it was gone, but in the deeper recesses of her mind
there must have lingered some recognition which quickened her heart at
sight of it.

A letter from the dead? No wonder Li Ho had handled it with reverence.
With trembling fingers the girl drew it from its violated covering.

"Little Desire"--the name lay like a caress--"if you read this it will
be because I am not here to tell you. And, there is no one else. My
great dread is the dread of leaving you. If I could only look into the
future for one moment, and see you in it, safe and happy, nothing else
would matter. But I am afraid. I have always been too much afraid. You
are not like me. I try to remember that. You are like your grandfather.
He was a brave man. His eyes were grey like yours. He died before you
were born and he never knew that Harry was not really my husband. I did
not know it either, then. You see, he had a wife in England. I suppose
he thought it did not matter. But when he died, it did matter. There
was no one then on whom either you or I had any claim. I should have
been brave enough to go on by myself. But I was never brave.

"It was then that Dr. Farr, who had been kind through Harry's illness,
asked me to marry him. He was a middle-aged man. He said he would take
care of w both. You were just three months old.

"I know now that I made a terrible mistake. He is not kind. He is not
good. I am terrified of him. But the fear which makes me brave against
other fears is the thought of leaving you. I try to remember my father.
If I had been like him I could have worked for you and we might have
been happy. Perhaps my mother was timid. I don't remember her.

"I don't know what to put in this letter, or how to make you
understand. I loved your father. He was not a bad man. I am sure he
never harmed anyone. He would have taken care of me all his life. But
he didn't live. It was Dr. Farr who found out about the English wife.
He pointed out that you would have no name and offered to give you his.

"I did you a great wrong. His name--better far to