make it necessary that one of us should go
away--there will never be any quiet in your father's
house while we both live there. Don't be alarmed or
surprised if you get word shortly that I have vanished.

Yours as ever,
J. M.

To this letter was added a note in Strangeways' hand at the bottom of
the page, "_She was not to blame; it was I who left_."

"We have not learnt very much about her from those two letters, have
we?" said Pere Antoine. "They are ordinary, and leave many questions,
which we wanted to ask, unanswered."

"Yes, they do little more than confirm Strangeways' own statements,
and yet. . . ."

"Well?"

"They tell us that her true initials were J. M., the same as those of
her assumed name, and the same as those of the monogram on the locket;
and they tell us of her great loneliness."

"But I can't see how a knowledge of that one fact--her great
loneliness--will help us; it does not reconstruct for us the details
of her life so that we can imagine her to ourselves, nor does it
contribute anything towards your defence."

"Bother my defence. I don't much care if I am hanged; that would at
least be a final solution, so far as I am concerned, to this problem
of living. What troubles me at present is, how is this woman feeling
about my marriage with a half-breed girl? Now these letters help me;
they make me certain that whatever I may be compelled to do at any
future time by reason of my isolation, she will not be hard upon me,
but will understand. This marriage with Peggy, for instance, looks
like a betrayal of her. And though she is dead, I should hate to
grieve her in the other world."

Granger paused, and then he added fiercely, "And I'm glad of that last
letter for another reason, because it states so clearly that she never
loved the other man."

"That can make no difference now."

"But it can," said Granger, rising to his feet, and speaking in a
strained whisper, with clenched hands, "I tell you it can. If I
thought that she had ever really cared for him, I would shoot myself
here and now, that I might be beside her to get between him and her.
The thought that he was there with her all alone in the vastness, free
to do and to say just whatever he pleased, and that I was shut out,
would drive me crazy. Do you think that, if I supposed that he had got
his arms around her over there, I could ever rest--if I thought that
she wo