"Yes," I agreed, "perhaps you're right." "Even if she'd never seen him," Godfrey added, "she must have suspected who it was--there was only one man in the world whom her sister was capable of killing. Or she might have imagined that it was some one else. There's been nothing in all this, Lester, to disprove my original theory about Miss Lawrence." "Godfrey," I said impulsively, "I'm going to disprove it once and for all. Look at this," and I thrust into his hands the photograph Burr Curtiss had entrusted to me. He gazed at it for some moments in silence. At last he handed it back to me. "Do you believe that theory now?" I asked. "No," he answered, and sat staring straight before him, his lips compressed. "I knew you'd say so," I said. "I knew you'd see how impossible it was that there should be any shameful secret in her life. I wavered once or twice when every discovery we made seemed to confirm your theory, but I never really believed it. I'd only to recall this photograph----" "Why didn't you show it to me before?" he asked. "Candidly, Godfrey," I answered, crimsoning a little, "I--I don't know." "Oh, yes, you do!" he retorted. "You were afraid I'd chin it out of you." "Well, yes, I was," I admitted. He looked at me curiously for a moment. "I see you don't know me very well, even yet, Lester," he said, at last. "I'm sorry you didn't let me see it. It would have saved me a wild-goose chase. But then," he added, with a grim little laugh, "I might not have stumbled upon this second tragedy. So perhaps it was as well, after all. I forgive you." "You think the photograph would have made the mystery clearer?" I asked. "Clearer?" he echoed. "My dear Lester, it makes it more unexplainable than ever. It converts it from a vulgar intrigue into the most puzzling problem I ever had to deal with!" I was staring at him in astonishment. "I don't see how it can do that!" I protested. "Don't you? Well, I'll tell you. I've already pointed out to you that, so far as I could see, my theory was the only conceivable one which would explain Marcia Lawrence's flight. I look at that photograph and see at once that I must throw that theory aside. What have I left? Nothing! That photograph shows me a pure, cultured, innocent woman; I know that she loved devotedly the man she was to marry. Yet she deliberately deserts him. I should say it was incredible, if I didn't know it was true!" "Then," I said, "while we've solved one mystery, the other is as deep as ever." "Deeper!" he corrected. "Miles deeper. In fact, it hasn't any bottom at all, that I can see," and he sank back into his seat again, a deep line between his eyebrows. CHAPTER XXIV The Secret