He had so entirely persuaded himself that his duty was clear and that he must not speak to the girl of love that now, when he had done so, his entire plan of campaign must be revised, and new problems must be considered. When he had been swept away on the tide that carried him to an avowal, it had been with the vague sense of realization that, if he spoke at all, he must tell the whole story. He had not done so, and now came a new question: Had he the right to tell the story until, in so far as possible, he had probed its mystery? Suppose his worst fears proved themselves. The certainty would be little harder to confess than the presumption and the suspense. Suppose, on the other hand, the fighting chance to which every man clings should, after all, acquit him? Would it not be needless cruelty to inflict on her the fears that harried his own thoughts? Must he not try first to arm himself with a definite report for, or against, himself? After all, he argued weakly, or perhaps it was the devil's advocate that whispered the insidious counsel, there might be a mistake. The man of Ribero's story might still be some one else. He had never felt the instincts of murder. Surely, he had not been the embezzler, the libertine, the assassin! But, in answer to that argument, his colder logic contended there might have been to his present Dr. Jekyll a Mr. Hyde of the past. The letter he held in his hand of course meant nothing more than that Ribero had talked to some one. It might be merely the fault of some idle gossip in a Latin-American cafe, when the claret flowed too freely. The writer, this unknown "H. S. R.," had probably taken Ribero's testimony at its face value. Then, out of the page arose insistently the one sentence that did mean something more, the new link in a chain of definite conclusion. "Since you beat it to God's Country and went West--" That was the new evidence this anonymous witness had contributed. He had certainly gone West! Assuredly, he must go to South America, and prosecute himself. To do this meant to thrust himself into a situation that held a hundred chances, but there was no one else who could determine it for him. It was not merely a matter of collecting and sifting evidence. It was also a test of subjecting his dormant memory to the stimulus of place and sights and sounds and smells. When he stood at the spot where Carter had faced his executioners, surely, if he were Carter, he would awaken to self-recognition. He would slip away on some pretext, and try out the issue, and then, when he spoke to Duska, he could speak in definite terms. And if he were the culprit? The question came back as surely as the pendulum swings to the bottom of the arc, and rested at the hideous conviction that he must be the malefactor. Then, Saxon rose and paced the floor, his hand convulsively crushing the letter into a crumpled wad.