“But so hard to believe, and so bitter a thing to believe”--there was a sudden eager thrill in John Bruce's voice--“that you wept upon it. Look, Claire!” he cried. “I have that letter here--and this, that I took from Crang to-day when I turned the tables on him. See! Read them both!” He took from his pocket the letter and the slip cut from the bottom of the sheet, and laid them in her lap. “The bottom was written in invisible ink--the way always communicated privately with Larmon. Salt brings it out. I knew Larmon would subject it to the test, so I was willing to write anything that Crang dictated. I wrote that secret message on the bottom of the paper while Crang was out of the room where he had me a prisoner. Oh, don't you see now, Claire? When your tears fell on the paper faint traces of the secret writing began to appear. That gave Crang the clew, and he worked at it until he had brought out the message, and then he cut off the bottom before delivering the letter to Larmon, and----” John Bruce stopped. Claire's face was buried in the cushions, and, huddled in the corner of the car, she was sobbing bitterly. “Don't! Don't cry, Claire!” John Bruce whispered, and laid his hand over hers where it crushed the letter in her lap. “I believed it,” she said. “I did you that wrong. There is no forgiveness for such meanness of soul as that.” “No,” John Bruce answered gently, “there is no forgiveness--because there is nothing to forgive. It was only another piece of that miserable hound's cunning that tricked us both. I did not appreciate what he was after in that reference to you; I thought he was only trying to make the letter bullet-proof in its plausibility for Larmon's benefit--I never thought that he would show it to you.” She had not drawn her hand away, but her face was still hidden; and for a moment there was silence between them. “Claire,” John Bruce said in a low voice, “the night I left your house you said that, rather than regretting your promise to marry Crang, you had come to be glad you had made it. Can you still say that?” She lifted her face now, tear-stained, the brown eyes strangely radiant through the wet lashes. “Yes,” she said. “I am glad. So glad--because I know now that it was worth it all so many, many times over.” “Claire”--his voice was lower still--“I left your house that night, angry, jealous, misjudging you because you had said that. You asked for forgiveness a minute ago when there was nothing to forgive; I asked for forgiveness from you after that night, but even then I did not know how far beyond the right to forgiveness I had gone.” She stared at him in a startled way. “What--what do you mean?” she breathed. And now John Bruce's face was alight.