A pause followed. Stafford still sat motionless, but his face gradually changed from its stern aspect to the look that Morewood had once caught on his canvas. "You're in love with her still?" he exclaimed. "Still?" "Yes. Haven't you conquered it? I'm a poor hand at preaching, but, by Jove! If I thought like you, I'd never think of the girl again." "I mean to marry her," said Stafford quietly. "I have chosen." Morewood was in very truth shocked. But Stafford's morals, after all, were not his care. "Perhaps she won't have you," he suggested at last, as though it were a happy solution. Stafford laughed outright. "Then I could go back to my priesthood, I suppose?" "Well--after a time." "As a burglar who is caught before his robbery goes back to his trade. As if it made the smallest difference--as if the result mattered!" "I suppose you are right there." "Of course. But she will have me." "Do you think so?" "I don't doubt it. If I doubted it, I should die." "I doubt it." "Pardon me; I dare say you do." "You don't want to talk about that?" "It isn't worth while. I no more doubt it than that the sun shines. Well, Mr. Morewood, I am obliged to you for hearing me out. I had a curiosity to see how my resolution struck you." "If you have told me the truth, it strikes me as devilish. I'm no saint; but if a man believes in good, as you do, by God, he oughtn't to trample it under foot!" Stafford took no notice of him, He rose and held out his hand. "I'm going back to London to-morrow," he said, "to wait till she comes." "God help you!" said Morewood, with a sudden impulse. "I have no more to do with God," said Stafford. "Then the devil help you, if you rely on him!" "Don't be angry," he said, with a swift return of his old sweet smile. "In old days I should have liked your indignation. I still like you for it. But I have made my choice." "'Evil, be thou my good.' Is that it?" "Yes, if you like. Why talk about it any more? It is done." He turned and walked away, leaving Morewood alone to finish his forgotten lunch. He could not get the thought of the man out of his mind all day. It was with him as he worked, and with him when he sat after dinner in the parlor of his little inn, with his pipe and whisky and water. He was so full of Stafford that he could not resist the impulse to tell somebody else, and at last he took a sheet of paper. "I don't know if he's in town," he said, "but I'll chance it;" and he began: "DEAR AYRE: