er to me as the truth is, I must
show you plainly that I know all of it, nor can I rest until I do show
you. I want you to answer this letter--though I must not see you again
for a long time--and in your answer you must set me right if I am
anywhere mistaken in what I have learned.

"At first, and until after the second time we met, I did not believe in
your heart, though I did in your mind and humor. Even since then, there
have come strange, small, inexplicable mistrustings of you, but now
I throw them all away and trust you wholly, Monsieur Citizen Georges
Meilbac!--I shall always think of you in those impossible garnishments
of my poor great-uncle, and I persuade myself that he must have been a
little like you.

"I trust you because I have heard the story of your profound goodness.
The first reason for my father's dislike was your belief in freedom
as the right of all men. Ah, it is not your pretty exaggerations and
flatteries (I laugh at them!) that speak for you, but your career,
itself, and the brave things you have done. My father's dislike flared
into hatred because you worsted him when he discovered that he could
not successfully defend the wrong against you and fell back upon sheer
insult.

"He is a man whom I do not know--strange as that seems as I write it.
It is only to you, who have taught me so much, that I could write it. I
have tried to know him and to realize that I am his daughter, but we are
the coldest acquaintances, that is all; and I cannot see how a change
could come. I do not understand him; least of all do I understand why he
is a gambler. It has been explained to me that it is his great passion,
but all I comprehend in these words is that they are full of shame for
his daughter.

"This is what was told me: he has always played heavily and
skillfully--adding much to his estate in that way--and in Rouen always
with a certain coterie, which was joined, several years ago, by the man
you came to save last night.

"Your devotion to Mr. Gray has been the most beautiful thing in your
life. I know all that the town knows of that, except the thousand hidden
sacrifices you have made for him, those things which no one will ever
know. (And yet, you see, I know them after all!) For your sake, because
you love him, I will not even call him unworthy.

"I have heard--from one who told unwillingly--the story of the night two
years ago, when the play ran so terribly high; and how, in the morning
when the