must drag my lengthening chain until I die! I must live in
pain and disgust, bound to a corpse, covered with a leprosy, because the
angel whose mission it is to save me will not come down from her heaven
and touch me with her finger.

"You shall not see these words, Lettice--my dear Lettice! They are the
offspring of a disordered brain. I meant to write you such a calm and
humble message, telling you that your counsel was wise--that I would
follow it--that I knew I had your sympathy, and that I reverenced you as
a saint. If I go on writing what I do not mean to send, it is only
because the freedom of my words has brought me peace and comfort, and
because it is good that I should allow myself to write the truth, though
I am not allowed to write it to _you_!

"Not allowed to write the truth to you, Lettice? That, surely, is a
blasphemy! If I may not write the truth to you, then I may not know
you--I may not worship you--I may not give my soul into your keeping.

"I will test it. My letter shall go. You will not answer it--you will
only sit still, and either hate or love me; and one day I shall know
which it has been. ALAN."

Whilst Lettice read this wild and incoherent letter, she sank on her
knees by her bedside, unable in any other attitude to bear the strain
which it put upon her feelings.

"How dare he?" she murmured, at the first outbreak of his passionate
complaint; but, as she went on reading, the glow of pity melted her
woman's heart, and only once more she protested, in words, against the
audacious candor of her lover.

"How could he?"

And as she finished, and her head was bowed upon her hands, and upon the
letter which lay between them, her lips sought out the words which he
had written last of all, as though they would carry a message of
forgiveness--and consolation to the spirit which hovered beneath it.

CHAPTER XI.

SYDNEY GIVES ADVICE.

The day after Sydney Campion had heard Brooke Dalton's story of the
disappearance of Alan Walcott's wife had been a very busy one for him.
He had tried to get away from his work at an early hour, in order that
he might pay one of his rare visits to Maple Cottage, and combine with
his inquiries into the welfare of his mother certain necessary cautions
to his sister Lettice. It was indispensable that she should be made to
understand what sort of man this precious poet was known to be, and how
impossible it had become that a sister of his should continue t