ription had not
arrested his eye. It had no beginning, or date; but its contents soon
acquainted him with her motive for the precipitate act. The few
concluding sentences are all that it will be necessary to quote here:--

'There was no way out of it, even if I could have found you, without
infringing one of the conditions I had previously laid down. The long
desire of my heart has been not to impoverish you or mar your career.
The new desire was to save myself and, still more, another yet unborn.
. . . I have done a desperate thing. Yet for myself I could do no
better, and for you no less. I would have sacrificed my single self
to honesty, but I was not alone concerned. What woman has a right to
blight a coming life to preserve her personal integrity? . . . The
one bright spot is that it saves you and your endowment from further
catastrophes, and preserves you to the pleasant paths of scientific
fame. I no longer lie like a log across your path, which is now as
open as on the day before you saw me, and ere I encouraged you to win
me. Alas, Swithin, I ought to have known better. The folly was
great, and the suffering be upon my head! I ought not to have
consented to that last interview: all was well till then! . . . Well,
I have borne much, and am not unprepared. As for you, Swithin, by
simply pressing straight on your triumph is assured. Do not
communicate with me in any way--not even in answer to this. Do not
think of me. Do not see me ever any more.--Your unhappy

'VIVIETTE.'

Swithin's heart swelled within him in sudden pity for her, first; then he
blanched with a horrified sense of what she had done, and at his own
relation to the deed. He felt like an awakened somnambulist who should
find that he had been accessory to a tragedy during his unconsciousness.
She had loosened the knot of her difficulties by cutting it
unscrupulously through and through.

The big tidings rather dazed than crushed him, his predominant feeling
being soon again one of keenest sorrow and sympathy. Yet one thing was
obvious; he could do nothing--absolutely nothing. The event which he now
heard of for the first time had taken place five long months ago. He
reflected, and regretted--and mechanically went on with his preparations
for settling down to work under the shadow of Table Mountain. He was as
one who suddenly finds the world a stranger place than he th