A sharp straggle went on within my mind. Mr. Thorley evidently thought it sprang from another cause, and, with much delicacy, gave me to understand that in the promised introduction, he did not consider there was the slightest necessity to state more than that I had been an army surgeon, and was his valued friend; that no reports against me were likely to reach the far Canadian settlement, whither I should carry both to his son-in-law and the world at large, a perfectly unknown and unblemished name. If I had ever wavered, this decided me. The hope must go. So I let it go, in all probability, for ever. Was I right? I can hear you say, "Yes, Max." In bidding the chaplain farewell, I tried to explain to him, that in this generous offer he had given to me more than he guessed--faith not only in heaven, but in mankind, and strength to do without shrinking what I am bound to do--trusting that there are other good Christians in this world besides himself who dare believe that a man may sin and yet repent--that the stigma even of an absolute crime is not hopeless, nor eternal. His own opinion concerning my present conduct, or the facts of my past history, I did not seek; it was of little moment; he will shortly learn all. My love, I have resolved, as the only thing possible to my future peace, the one thing exacted by the laws of God and man--to do what I ought to have done twenty years ago--to deliver myself up to justice. Now I have told you; but I cannot tell you the infinite calm which this resolution has brought to me. To be free; to lay down this living load of lies, which has hung about me for twenty years; to speak the whole truth before God and man--confess all, and take my punishment--my love, my love, if you knew what the thought of this is to me, you would neither tremble nor weep, but rather rejoice! My Theodora, I take you in my arms, I hold you to my heart, and love you with a love that is dearer than life and stronger than-death, and I ask you to let me do this. In the enclosed letter to your father, I have, after relating all the circumstances of which I here inform you, implored him to release me from a pledge which I ought never to have given. Never, for it was putting the fear of man before the fear of God: it was binding myself to an eternal hypocrisy, an inward gnawing of shame, which paralyzed my very soul. I must escape it; you must try to release me from it,--my love, who loves me better than herself, better than myself, I mean this poor worthless self, battered and old, which I have often thought was more fit to go down into the grave than live to be my dear girl's husband. Forgive me if I wound you. By the intolerable agony of this hour, I feel that the sacrifice is just and right.