"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else, because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have sent it?" "Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?" Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, although the handwriting is disguised." Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble. "I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my husband's happiness required----" I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but-- not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine. She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv-- --" I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty- five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep she cannot retrace." Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, "I will retrace it." "I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I get into the house I'll burn it." "I can trust you," she replied, "but----"