I see it in its true light.... Do you begin to understand,
Anita--knowing something of what my life has been, or must I explain?"

"I--I'm afraid you must explain," she answered in a small voice, like a
child's. She felt suddenly weak and sick, as if she might collapse in the
man's arms. It was as if some terrible weapon wrapped round and half
hidden in folds of velvet were lifted above her head to strike her down.

She shrank from the blow, yet asked for it. Already she guessed dimly
that Knight's confession was to be very different from and far more
terrible than anything she had expected.

"I was the man whose advertisement you answered--the man who wrote you
the stiff letter in the handwriting you didn't like, signed N. Smith."

"Oh!" The word broke from her in a moan.

"Darling! Have I lost you if I go on?"

"You must go on!" she cried out, sharply. "For both our sakes you must go
on!"

"I know how it looks to you. And it was vile. But I couldn't be sure when
I advertised what an angel would answer to my call, and what a brute I
should be to deceive her. I thought the sort of girl who'd reply to an
'ad' for a wife would be fair game; that I should be giving her an
equivalent for what she'd give me.

"For my business that I had to carry out in England I needed a wife of
another sort from any woman I knew, or could get to know, in an ordinary
way; she had to be of good birth and education, nice-looking and
pleasant-mannered--if possible with highly placed friends or relatives.
Money didn't matter. I had enough--or would have. I got a lot of answers,
but the only one that seemed good was yours. I felt nearly certain you
were the woman I wanted, so I rigged up a plan. You know how it worked
out."

"Maybe I'm stupid," Annesley said, dry-lipped. "I don't understand yet."

"Why, I thought the thing over, and it seemed to me that married life--if
it came to that--would be easier for both if the man could make some sort
of appeal to the love of romance in a girl. Well, she wouldn't think the
man who had to get the right sort of wife by advertising much of a figure
of romance. So the idea came to me of--of starting two personalities. I
wrote you a stiff, precise sort of letter in a disguised business hand,
making an appointment at the Savoy. When that was done, the writer went
out of your life.

"He just ceased to exist, except that he sat behind a big screen of
newspaper and watched for a girl in gray-and-purpl