“I should not blame you if you were to get a divorce from me at once. I realize that this admission from me gives you the proper grounds for it. Indeed, I should be thankful if you would, for then I shall be free to marry the man who already has my heart. I hope you will find forgiveness for me in that big, noble heart of yours. “Forget me, and that I ever came into your life, and be happy, as I feel sure you will be, in some other girl’s love. “I have nothing more to say, except that I hope you will not search for me, for it will be useless. You can never, never find me. All that I ask from you is to be let alone. I have followed the dictates of my own heart, and that must be my reason for the step I am to take. “Again I urge that you make no attempt to discover my whereabouts. Thanking you in advance for complying with my earnest request in this respect, I sign myself for the first and last time. “YOUR WIFE JESS.” For some moments after he had finished this cruel epistle, John Dinsmore sat staring at it like one suddenly bereft of reason. Little Jess gone! eloped with a former lover! He could scarcely believe that he had read the written lines aright. He told himself that he must be laboring under some mad delusion. Over and over again he read the fatal words, until every line was burned in letters of fire indelibly into his brain. He passed his cold, trembling hands over his brow. Great beads of perspiration were standing out on it, and his veins were like knotted whipcords. Little Jess, who only yesterday had clung to him with loving words and kisses, awakening all the love that had lain dormant in his heart and soul, had fled from him. He could almost as easily have looked for the world to come suddenly to an end, and all time, light, hope and life to be suddenly blighted and turned into chaos and darkness! In that moment of bitter pain he thought of lines he had read only the day before in a book which he had seen on the drawing-room table, while he was awaiting the coming of Jess. They recurred to him now with crushing force: “I met a kindred heart, and that heart to me said: ‘Come;’ Mine went out to meet it, but was lost in sudden gloom. Whither wander all these fair things, to some land beyond life’s sea? Is there nothing glad and lasting in this weary world for me?” Never until that moment did John Dinsmore realize how deeply he had learned to love the girlish bride who had just fled from him, crushing his heart and wrecking his life so cruelly. For the second time in his life he had been ruthlessly hurt by the woman to whom he had allowed his honest heart to go out in abounding love. He heard a rustle beside him, and raising his death-white face quickly, he saw Queenie standing before him.