“My misery was so great, I scarcely realized the horror of this. My brain was dulled by intense pain. As in a dream I listened to him, hardly heeding him, and conscious only of a vague relief as he left me to go abroad, to shake off, he said, the anxiety he had suffered. “I stayed on another week or so at Dover, still in the same condition. Then my brain suddenly cleared; but my misery returned in greater force. I was mad once more with an agony of pain. I left Dover; it was hateful to me. I traveled to London. A longing, a craving seized me to see Gladys, to look on her once more, though she was dead to me forever. I drove to the house; and the memory of Everest’s words came back to me then--that she was gone. Pale and faint with anxiety, I alighted at the well-known gate, and I saw at a glance that the house was deserted. “What had become of Gladys? How had she managed? Was she starving--lost in London, with not a friend in the world? In an instant my rage was quenched. I saw her only in her sweetness, her beauty, and I leaned against the gate, overwhelmed with the flood of miserable thoughts that crowded upon me. “But it was not a time for dreams. I felt I must act. So I hurried to the house-agents, feeling sure that they could tell me something. From them I gleaned the barest information. My wife had visited them early in the morning following that dreadful night, paid them the rent to the end of the quarter, and left the key. I questioned them closely and eagerly, but could gather nothing more, and then I went away, feeling like a man whose life was almost ended. Over and over again I whispered to myself, with a twinge of remorse, that Gladys was innocent, and would have explained all if I had only let her. Then the memory of Everest’s words, the damning evidence of Conway’s note, returned, and I knew not what to think; but on one point I was certain--henceforth life held no duty for me till Gladys was found. Though the golden dream of our joy was ended, though I doubted her, she must be found and cared for. “I began a search--a search, Stuart, that has lasted all my life. By good hap at this time a distant cousin, dying, bequeathed me his property, which, though not large, came like a godsend at the moment, for every available penny I had, had been expended in my search. I was haunted by my wife’s pale, horror-stricken face gleaming in the moonlight, by the memory of my baby child, whose prattle had sounded like music in my ears. I knew too well the miseries, the horrors, of London, and I could not bear to think that the woman I had held so near and--Heaven help me!--still treasured in my heart, was thrown into its terrible jaws and left to perish without a helping hand.