steady look in her eyes never changed.

"Go on," she repeated.

"I ask you now--what explanation have you to offer?"

"Please finish your story first," she replied. "Then I will tell you
mine."

"I have little to add. I could not bring myself to give up the letter
until I was sure it was really yours. Lest anyone else should see it, I
hid it where no one could find it. But when I came down from my room
again, Mr. Wallace told me you had been in and had gone back to Taloona.
So I kept it until I could be sure."

"Sure of what?"

"Whether--you had had it."

She laid it on the table in front of him.

"Take it," she said. "Do what you will with it. I am sorry you showed it
to me. I would rather not have seen it. How it came where it was found I
do not know. Until to-night I did not know it existed."

She met his glance openly, frankly, proudly.

"And you believed it was mine!" she added.

"I had no alternative--until I saw you," he answered.

"You have had that letter for weeks; I have been here three days. Yet
you only come to me now--when I have asked you to come."

"I dared not see you--lest----"

"Lest you discovered me to be even a greater traitress than you had
already learned me to be," she said in measured tones. "I cannot blame
you. The fault was mine. I have given you ample reason why your faith in
me should have ended."

"That is not true," he exclaimed. "I could not bring myself to believe
you had acted so. But it was horrible enough as it was. It was because I
had not lost faith in you that I hid the letter so as to prevent anyone
else seeing it. By doing so I was not acting as I should have acted
towards the Bank."

"I never had it, never. I wish I had not seen it, for it"--her voice
lost its hardness as she spoke--"it is the last straw. Whatever else I
knew my husband to be, I held him innocent of that crime. When you and
all the others suspected him, I would not, could not bring myself to
believe it. But now----"

Her voice caught and she turned aside, sinking into a chair where she
sat with averted face and bowed head.

"No wonder you did not wish to see me again," she added presently, as he
did not speak. "What am I now? The wife of a thief, an outlaw, one who
was almost a murderer. Oh, leave me! I should not have sent to you.
Leave me. There is nothing for me now but death or degradation."

"You must not say that, Jess, you must not say that," he said in a
strained voice as he ca