speak for weeks, then, when I tried, I
couldn't, God had put the curse of silence on my wickedness.'

"Think of Madelene being wicked, Chum.

"'When I was getting well enough and reconciled to my own fate, enough
to think of others, I thought of my two lovers. Then I asked my nurse
for a glass. One look, and I made up my mind never to see either of them
again.

"'Both of them were clamoring to see me, and I refused to see either.
The plain man wrote me the only love letter I ever received. I have worn
it out reading it. It was so manly, so unselfish! He blamed himself for
the accident, and offered me his devotion and love, no matter in what
condition the letter found me. This letter he wrote in Uncle Andrew's
library, left it open on the desk and--disappeared.

"'I have never heard from him from that day to this. I never could
understand it. A man that could write that letter, couldn't run away.
The last sentence in his letter proved that. It said: "Remember, dear
Madelene, that somewhere, somehow, I am thinking of you always; that
whether you see me or not, you will some day come to know that I love
your soul, not your face; that your life is dear to me, and no calamity
can make any difference."

"'Those were brave words, and after I read them, I knew for the first
time that this was the man I loved. They told me he was frightfully
disfigured, too, but that made no difference to me, I loved him. But he
was gone, no one knew where. Why did he go?

"'The handsome man disappeared the same day, and he never came back, but
he left no letter.

"'Dear Lottie, I have only now solved the mystery. My sometime nurse has
just confessed that the night the letter was written the other man came
to the house, like a thief, he had bribed her to give me drugs to make
me sleep and then she led him into my room and showed him my scars. If
he ever loved me at all, he was in love with my face; the other man
loved me. One went away because he saw me, the other one because he saw
his rival apparently granted the interview refused to him. My true lover
must have seen that man sneaking up to my room.'

"John, every fibre of my being danced for joy. I didn't hear the rest,
and she read several pages. I had heard enough.

"I went right out on the deck, begged pardon to begin with, introduced
myself, confessed to eavesdropping, told who I was, where I had been and
asked for that letter.

"I got it and Madelene's picture; the one you h