, for his sake, let us resume
the surface semblance of a common life which, until he persuaded me,
I was determined to abandon.

"It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that
way, for yours. I don't think you care about me; I don't think you
ever did or ever will. Yet you must know how it was with me until I
could endure my isolation no longer. And I say to you perfectly
frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy
Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world. Which is why I
write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my
private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so
plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have
all power in the matter."

The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house:

"Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away
from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the
liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass
of nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at
the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen
you several times with a Mr. Skelton."

As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face
at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages. And at last
he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough
shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand.

It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something
beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against
him--had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now;
something occult, sinister, inexorable.

He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he
lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had
accounted to nobody, and never would account--on earth. And into his
memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the
letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of
the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had
missed.

Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost
doglike:

"Have you read it?" he asked.

Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes."

"Is it what I told you?"

"Yes--substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes