elf, and in return for giving that I have money and a home,
and papa and Sarah and Clementine are comfortable and happy. And as
Josiah has kept his side of it, so I must keep mine, and be
faithful to him always in word and deed. Dearest, it is too
terrible to think of this material aspect to a bond which now I
know should only be one of love and faith and tenderness. But it
_is_ a bond, and I have given my word, and no happiness could come
to us if I should break it, _as Josiah has not broken his_. And oh,
Hector, you do not know how good he has always been to me, and
generous and indulgent! It is not his fault that he is not of our
class, and I must do my utmost to make him happy, and atone for
this wound which I have unwittingly given him, and which he is, and
must always remain, unconscious of. Oh, if something could have
warned me, after that first time we met, that I would love you--had
begun to love you--even then there would have been time to draw
back, to save us both, perhaps, from suffering. And yet, and yet, I
do not know, we might have missed the greatest and noblest good of
all our lives. Dearest, I want you to keep the memory of me as
something happy. Each year, when the spring-time comes and the
young fresh green, I want you to look back on our day at
Versailles, and to say to yourself, 'Life cannot be all sad,
because nature gave the earth the returning spring.' And some
spring must come for us, too--if only in our hearts.

"And now, O my beloved, good-bye! I cannot even tell to you the
anguish which is wringing my heart. It is all summed up in this. I
love you! I love you! and we must say forever a farewell!

"THEODORA.

"P.S.--I am sending this to your home."

As he read the last words the paper slipped from Josiah's nerveless
hands, and for many minutes he sat as one stricken blind and dumb. Then
his poor, plebeian figure seemed to crumple up, and with an inarticulate
cry of rage and despair he fell forward, with his head upon his
out-stretched arms across the breakfast-table.

How long he remained there he never knew. It seemed a whole lifetime
later when he began to realize things--to know where he was--to
remember.

"Oh, God!" he said. "Oh, God!"

He picked up the letter and read it all over again, weighing every word.

Who was this thief who had stolen his