“I knew it! I saw it in his face the first time I looked at him. I saw it before. I saw it in his picture. O Clarke, I shrink even from his writing; must I read this letter?” “I think you should; I think you should know just what threatens us if you refuse him the money.” Polly took the letter. “You have read it?” she inquired. But Clarke shook his head. “I know the nature of its contents, but I did not wait to read the letter. He wrote it in a roomful of men, under a wager——” Clarke paused; why hurt her with these details? “But what does that matter? It is the facts you want. Come, screw up your courage, dear; or stay, let me read it to you.” She gave him the letter and he read to her these words: DEAR MAIDA: You wish to know why I want another five thousand dollars after having received a good ten thousand from you already. Well, I am going to tell you. I have two passions, one for mechanical invention and one—I must be candid or this letter will fail in its object—for wild and unlimited pleasure. When I was young I had not enough money to indulge in but one of these instincts, but on the day I saw twenty thousand dollars in my hand, my other passion, long suppressed, awoke, and notwithstanding the fact that your mother lay dying in the house, I resolved to leave the town where I was known as soon as she was decently buried, for as I said to myself, the possession of twenty thousand dollars means the making of a fortune in Monte Carlo, and a maddening good time of it meanwhile.