"Quite possible; only it would have been ever so much better had I known before. It actually seemed when I saw your face to-night as if God had brought you--it was like a miracle. Do you know why? Because, for the first time in three years, I can welcome you with all my heart." "Beth, Beth," utterly forgetting everything but the mystery of her words, his gray eyes darkening from eagerness, "what is it you mean? For God's sake tell me! These years have been centuries; through them all I have been waiting your word." She drew in her breath sharply, reaching out one hand to grasp the back of a chair. "It--it could not be spoken," she said, her voice faltering. "Not until to-day was it possible for me to break the silence." "And now--to-day?" She smiled suddenly up at him, her eyes filled with promise. "God has been good," she whispered, drawing from within the lace of her waist a crumpled envelope,--"oh, so good, even when I doubted Him. See, I have kept this hidden there every moment since it first came, even on the stage in my changes of costume. I dared not part with it for a single instant--it was far too precious." She sank back upon the chair, holding out toward him the paper. "Read that yourself, if my tears have not made the lines illegible." He took it from her, his hands trembling, and drew forth the enclosure, a single sheet of rough yellow paper. Once he paused, glancing toward where she sat, her face buried in her arms across the chair-back. Then he smoothed out the wrinkles, and read slowly, studying over each pencil-written, ill-spelled word, every crease and stain leaving an impression upon his brain: "SAN JUAN, COL., DEC. 12, 1904.