the faintest red. They are the hands of a dead person--I wish they were!
But I must know--must know. We are due in Havana to-morrow. I shall take
the first boat out--to anywhere, where I can get a train, that's the
quickest. Oh, you, who have so often told me I must stop and think and
realize things! Did you know what it _was_ you wanted me to do? Have you
any idea what torture _is?_ You couldn't! I don't believe even Mahr
would have done this to me--if he had known; nobody could--nobody could.
Now, all sorts of things are assailing me; not only the horror that
Dorothy should _know_, but the horror of having _done_ such things. I
can't feel that it was I; it must have been somebody else. Why, I
couldn't have; it's impossible; and yet I did, I did, I did! Sometimes I
laugh, and then I am frightened at myself--I did it just then; it was at
the thought that here am I, _writing letters_--I, who have always
thought letters that incriminate were the weakness of fools, the blind
spot of intelligence--I, who have profited by letters--written in anger,
in love, in the passion of money-getting--everything--I'm
writing--writing from my bursting heart. Ah, you wanted me to realize;
I'm fulfilling your wish. Oh, good, kind soul that you are, forgive me!
I'm clinging to the thought of you to save me; I'm trusting in you
blindly. It's five days since I left."

The sheet that followed was on beflagged yachting paper:

"What luck! I happened on the Detmores the moment I landed. They were
just sailing. I transferred to them. I'm on board and homeward bound. We
reach St. Augustine to-morrow night; then I'm coming through as fast as
I can. I've thought it all over now. Since the wireless messages weren't
sent, I shall send no cable or telegram. I shall find out what the
situation is, and perhaps it will be better for me just to disappear. It
may be best that Dorothy shall never see me again. I shall go straight
home. I'm posting this in St. Augustine; it will probably go on the same
train with me. When you receive this and have read it, come to me. I
shall need you, I know--but perhaps you won't care to; perhaps you won't
want to be mixed up in an affair that may already be the talk of the
town. It's one thing to know a criminal who goes unquestioned and
another to befriend one revealed and convicted. Don't come, then. I am
at the very end of my endurance now. What sort of a wreck will walk into
that disgraced home of mine? And still I pra