"Come," said I to myself, having walked to the far side of the open square, "sit on this bench, unfold the paper, and use your intelligence to overcome the hysteria which last night's experience and this odd affair of the Sheik have aroused. Be sensible. This message is a matter to be explained, just as all things are to be explained by any one who is not the victim of superstitious fear." This determination immediately cleared my reason. After all, there was nothing to solve. "Whoever controls the mechanism has seen me with the Judge," said I, "and doubtless has heard him mention his daughter, and perhaps has observed the effect of her name on me. Furthermore, he, or, as the Judge said, the man or woman behind the Sheik, has even seen me with Julianna and might well have drawn conclusions. The message was written in ill temper or as a piece of malicious mischief. And there's an end to it!" Whereupon I tore the scrap across the middle and, dropping it in the grass, I started toward my home. The picture of that writing, however, was too clearly photographed upon my vision; it continually wrote itself on the walls of buildings, upon the pavement or across the sky. And as it did, little by little, it began to dawn upon me that the handwriting with which it had been executed I had seen before. When at last, from the back of my mind, I recalled the occasion, I astonished those persons who were walking near me by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk as if stricken and uttering a sharp exclamation. My hand sought the contents of my inside coat pocket; among the papers there I found the note which Julianna, wishing me to see her father, had written me, and with trembling fingers I spread the sheet before me. One look was all that was necessary, for it sent me hurrying back the way I had come; it was enough to cause me to kneel down on the grass in the gathering gloom that was filling the old square. Where I had sat a half-hour before, I now searched frantically for bits of torn paper. I found both pieces at last, placed them side by side and compared them with the note in my hand. I have already told you that Julianna wrote a hand distinguished from others by subtle peculiarities. The message from the Sheik was written as she would write! To believe, as I found I must believe, that she, with or without the knowledge of the Judge, would so far forget the obligations of her place in society as to operate a vulgar puppet in public, no matter how much it might interest or amuse her, was another shock to me. I am free to confess that, in spite of all my former assertions to myself that I had not loved her as much as I had supposed, this new development was the first that began to make me believe I had been blinded by mere infatuation.