ck in a certain Spanish-American gold mine. At first he always made
the same answer: "You know as well as I do, Welsley, I would never put a
penny into any property I had not inspected."

But gradually a desire to inspect it grew up in his mind. What would suit
his plans better than a long trip, as soon as the breaking of his
engagement was announced? A week at sea, two or three days on a river,
and then sixty miles on mule-back over the mountains--there at least he
would not be troubled by accounts of Christine's wedding, or assertions
that she had looked brilliant at the opera.

He had been at home about two weeks, when her first letter came. So far
the only scrap of her handwriting that he possessed was the formal
release that she had given him the afternoon they became engaged, and
which, for safe keeping doubtless, he always carried in his pocketbook,
and which he sometimes found himself reading over--not as a proof that he
could get out of his engagement, but rather in an attempt to verify the
fact that he had ever got into it.

However unfamiliar with her writing, he had not the least doubt about the
letter from the first instant that he saw it. No one else could use such
absurd faint blue and white paper and such large square envelopes. As he
took it up, he said to himself that it had never occurred to him that she
would write, and yet he saw without any sense of inconsistency that he
had looked for this letter in every mail. And yet, so perverse is the
nature of mankind, that he opened it, not with pleasure, but with a
sudden return of all his old terror of being trapped.

"Dear Max," it said. "I have been pretending so often to write to you for
the benefit of my inquiring friends, that I think I may as well do it as
a tribute to truth.

"How foolish that was--the night you went away! One gets carried away
sometimes by the drama of a situation, without any relation to the facts,
and the idea of parting forever from one's fiance is rather dramatic,
isn't it? I cried all night, and rather enjoyed it. Then in the morning
when I woke up, everything seemed to have returned to the normal, and I
could not understand what had made me so silly.

"Don't suppose that because you have gone, I am therefore freed from the
disagreeable criticism of which you made such a speciality. Ned comes in
almost every day to tell me that he does not approve of my conduct. I am
not behaving, it appears, as an affianced bride should.