No, I will not tell you about Anne, about the bitterness and tragedy of my life. If it can be removed, if I escape, whole and clean, I will come to you. There is danger, I know, on account of----No, I cannot tell you the danger without explaining all. But danger is nothing to me now. I will put fate to the test and have done. What I do I must do quickly, before my courage fails. If I were to see you again----That can not be. I could not see you face to face again and not tell you--and then---- No, I'm determined. I've let things go on too long. I saw it in your dear face when I left you. I am determined that you shall make no sacrifice for me. If I fail, there will be no one left but Anne, and you will never find her. She will see to that. If I succeed, I will come back to you. I promise, my beloved, as solemnly as if I were on my death-bed. I will come back and tell you all that I have hidden so carefully, my ugly, pitiful secret, which is known to but one person, now, in all the world--and after that, you may do as you will with me. If I never see you again, believe, oh, you must believe, that I love you. That, knowing you as I have come to know you, I will stake everything to come clean in your eyes, or I will never look into your dear eyes again. I am thinking of you, my dearest in all the world, only of you, and I beg, with my heart full of tears, that if I fail, you will remember gently her whom you have known as MARY BLAKE. Peter sat for a long time after he had finished reading, lost in thought. At last he stirred and, pointing to the signature, he said: "Then Mary Blake is not her own name." Morris shook his head. "No, I know that to be her stage name only," he said, quietly. "And her real name is?" "I don't know." Peter thought, "And yet he has asked her to be his wife. She must be a wonder!" Aloud he said, referring to the letter: "I think there is something here to account for your impression that Miss Blake wasn't too keen on her sister Anne. At any rate, the sister seems to be connected in some way with the thing that was troubling her. Did you make out this blotted place? These words crossed out?" He indicated with his finger. Donald bent above the crumpled sheet. "Yes," he said, "I made it out to be, 'My sister Anne, with whom I live, is'----" "That's what I make it," said Clancy. "And then she speaks again, right after it, of the bitterness and tragedy of her life, and it seems to be in connection with Anne.... And here again," he turned the page, "she says there will be no one left but Anne, and that you will never find her. What does that mean? And who is the one person who knows her secret? Surely her sister, who lives with her, would be the most likely to----"