"I wish to assure you that he has had the very highest medical skill bestowed on him since he came here. Owing to the exceptional exigencies and strain put on our Medical Service at the Front, he did not perhaps obtain the care to which he was entitled by our merciful and humane usages of war, as soon as would have been well. He received a most serious wound in the shoulder. That wound, I am pleased to tell you, is in as good a state as possible, and will leave no ill-effects. "But I regret to tell you, Madam, that Major Guthrie has lost his eyesight. He bears this misfortune with remarkable fortitude. As a young man I myself spent a happy year in Edinburgh, and so we have agreeable subjects of conversation. He tells me you are quite familiar with my language, or I should of course have written to you in English. "Believe me, Madam, "To remain with the utmost respect, "Yours faithfully, "KARL BRECHT." Underneath the signature of the doctor was written in hesitating, strange characters the words in English, "God bless you.--ALEXANDER GUTHRIE." And then, under these five words, came another sentence in German: "I may tell you for your consolation that it is extremely probable that Major Guthrie will be exchanged in the course of the next few weeks. But I have said nothing of that to him, for it will depend on the good-will of the British Government, and it is a good-will which we Germans have now learnt to distrust." She read the letter through again. There came over her a feeling of agony such as she never imagined any human being could suffer. During the past weeks of suspense, she had faced in her own mind many awful possibilities, but of this possibility she had not thought. Now she remembered, with piteous vividness, the straight, kindly gaze in his bright blue eyes--eyes which had had a pleasant play of humour in them. Sight does not mean the same to all men, but she knew that it meant a very great deal to the man she loved. He had always been an out-door man, a man who cared for everything that concerned open-air life--for birds, for trees, for flowers, for shooting, fishing, and gardening. Ever since she had known that Major Guthrie was alive and wounded, a prisoner in Germany, she had allowed her thoughts to dwell on the letters she would write to him when she received his address. She had composed so many letters in her mind--alternative letters--letters which should somehow make clear to him all that was in her heart, while yet concealing it first from the British Censors and then from his German jailers. But now she did not give these Censors and jailers a thought. She sat down and wrote quite simply and easily the words which welled up out of her heart: "MY DEAREST,