"I took it off the moment we met. It dropped in the porch. I couldn't let you find out that way." Her hand also dropped out of his. He turned heavily away from her. It was as though for a moment he had cherished some mad hope; now he stood broken and aloof, shaken with sobs that never reached his throat; oblivious alike to the rustle of the silk dress behind him, to the fluttering featherweight of her hand upon his arm. "Oh, Denis, Denis, if I could die ... if I could die! It is worse for me. You are not married; you are not tied for life. But I deserve it all, all, all.... There's no excuse for me, none. Yet there is some explanation--poor enough, God knows! Won't you listen to that? Won't you listen to me at all?" He turned slowly round, and looked upon Nan with the unseeing fixity of the blind. "Go on," he said. "I am listening, and will listen." "He cheated me!" she cried, passionately. "He took your letters, and he told me lies. But I allowed myself to be cheated," she added, miserably, "and I believed the lies; so I deserved not to find him out till it was too late; and I deserve this, Denis, I deserve it all. If only, only I could die!" He soothed her as best he could, taking her hand in one of his, and stroking it mechanically with the other. The action might have reminded them of something long past; but the present absorbed both their minds. It was all that they would ever have together. It was their life. "Don't tell me unless it helps you," he said, gently. "I begin to understand. And it was my fault--mine--for leaving you as I did." "Your fault! Yet if you had written--if you only had written!" she cried, loudly exonerating him in one breath, softly reproaching in the next. "I know. That was pride," he said bitterly. "I was so desperately unsuccessful up to Christmas! I did write in November, but I was always afraid that letter never went." "I never got it. Not a word of any sort, dear," she said, simply, "did I have from you till nearly May. And then----" "And then?" he repeated as she paused. "Have you no idea what I am going to tell you?" she asked, a new twinge in her tone. She could scarcely have explained her feeling, but the least inkling in him would have implied some slight excuse for her, would in any case have helped her to confess the climax of her late credulity. "None whatever," said Denis. "Yet it was your writing. I can show it you, for I have it still." "What writing do you mean?" he inquired, quite in the dark. "The address on the parcel." "What sort of parcel?" he exclaimed, as the truth flashed across him. "Quite small? Brown paper? Quick! Quick! I want to know!" "Yes--yes--and you don't know what was in it! Oh, Denis!" "I know what should have been," he said, grimly: "my first nugget--according to promise. But it was stolen, and afterward found." "And you don't know what was put in instead? Did you lose nothing else?"