"Let's look the position fairly in the face," he said to himself. "After all, I have done Isabel no substantial wrong; I was not a free agent. I could not return; and that course is open, to go to her and to her people, frankly explain, and make up to her by my future for the weak lapse of which I have been guilty. For what are these people to me?" He sat back with his brow knit, feeling, though, that such a course was impossible--that he could not go and humble himself before his betrothed, and that it would be an act of base and cruel hypocrisy to resume their old relations when his heart seemed to have but one desire--to see Marion again. "No, it is impossible!" he cried angrily. "It was not love. I never could have loved her. Heaven help me! What shall I do? Some clue-- some clue!" He started mentally again from the moment when he was called down to see his visitor, and he seemed to see her once more, standing close by the table--just there! Then he once more entered the brougham with her and tried to get some gleam of the direction they took, but he could only recall that the horses were standing with their heads toward the east. No more. The result was precisely the same as it had been at other times, utterly negative. He had thought of nothing but his companion till they reached the house, and he had not even the clue of the family name. Then a thought struck him, and he brightened up. Those moments when, after his vain search for the bullet, he had dressed the wound. She had prepared bandages for him, and with eager fingers now he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket for his pocket-book, opened it, and took out a closely-folded, very fine cambric handkerchief, deeply stained with blood. She had given it to him, and he held it to the wound for a few minutes, while a bandage was torn, and had afterwards thrust it into his breast, only in his ecstasy to later on, unseen, take it out, carefully fold it, and place it in one of the pockets of his little Russia case. His hands trembled as he opened it out and examined the corners, the fourth showing, carefully embroidered, the letters M.E.C. He had hoped for the full name in marking ink, and with a faint sigh he refolded the delicate piece of fabric, and replaced it in his pocket-book, to sit thinking once more, with the new cloud growing blacker.