e had not entertained a
doubt. Accordingly the emotional revulsion was strong when, breaking
open the envelope with cold fingers, Carlisle found that the letter
within was in a different handwriting from the superscription. It was
not from Dr. Vivian at all.

However, her instant uprush of relief was somewhat mitigated when she
saw--as she did in the first glance, for this hand had been not
unfamiliar to her once--that the letter Vivian enclosed to her was from
Jack Dalhousie.

Standing rigid by the window, she read with parted lips:

WEYMOUTH, May 14th.

DEAR V.V.:

I'd have answered your letter earlier only I haven't had any
heart for writing letters. Fate has knocked me out again. God
knows I've tried, and cut out the drink, and worked hard, and
suffered agonies of the damned, but it doesn't do any good.
The world isn't big enough for people like me to hide in, and
the only thing I can't understand is why people like me are
ever born. What's the use of it all, V.V., I can't see to
save my life. The trouble all came from a fellow named
Bellows, from home, a machinery salesman with T.B. Wicke
Sons, you may know him, who dropped off the train here a week
ago Saturday.

He saw me on the street one day, and then he went and told
everybody that I was in Texas because I'd been drummed from
home. Said I went out rowing with a girl and upset her and
then swam off for my skin and she was nearly drowned. I've
made some good friends here--or had made them, I'd better
say--and one of them rode out to our place and said I ought
to know what Bellows was saying, so I could thrash him before
he skipped town. Oh, what could I say.

Then I saw Miss Taylor just now, she's the girl from the East
I mentioned in the winter, and she asked me had I heard what
they were saying. I wanted to lie to her, and she'd have
believed me if I had, but you couldn't lie to her, and so I
said straight out I was crazy drunk at the time and didn't
know what I was doing, but I guessed most of it was true. She
cares a lot about those things, and I think she'd been
crying. God help me. So now everything's changed here; it
reminds me of home the way people look at me. Miss Taylor was
the worst, she's been so fine to me. She said come to see her
in two or three days, when she'd had time to thin