"I tell you this, Mr. Quarren, because it is due to you if you really love me--or if you once did love me--because when you have read this you will no longer care for me. "One evening you made me understand that you cared for me; and I replied to you only by a dazed silence that neither you nor I entirely understood at the time. It was not contempt for you--yet, perhaps, I could not really have cared very deeply for such a man as you then seemed to be. It was not intellectual indifference that silenced me.... And I can say no more about it--except that--something--changed me radically from that moment--and ever since I have been trying to understand myself--to learn something about myself--and of the world I live in--and of men. "When a crisis arrives self-revelation comes in a single flash. My financial crisis arrived as you know; I suddenly saw myself as I am--a woman astonishingly undeveloped and ignorant in many ways, crude, unawakened, stupid--a woman half-blinded with an unreasoning dread of more pain--pain which she thought had at last been left behind her--and a coward all through; and selfish from head to heel. "This is what I _really_ am. And I shall prove it by marrying for reasons entirely material, because I have no courage to ever again face adversity and unhappiness. [Illustration: "'I say, Quarren--does this old lady hang next to the battered party in black?'"] "You will not care to write to me; and you will not care to see me again. "I am glad you once cared for me. If you should ever reply to this letter, don't be very unkind to me. I know what I am--and I vaguely surmise what I shall lose by being so. But I have no courage for anything else. "STRELSA LEEDS." That was the letter she wrote to Quarren; and he read it standing by his desk while several noisy workmen were covering every available inch of his walls with Dankmere's family pictures, and the little Earl himself, whistling a lively air, trotted about superintending everything with all the cheerful self-confidence of a family dog regulating everything that goes on in his vicinity. "I say, Quarren--does this old lady hang next to the battered party in black?" he demanded briskly. Quarren looked around; "Yes," he said, "they're both by Nicholas Maas according to your list." "_I_ think they're bally fakes," remarked the Earl, "don't you?" "We'll try to find out," said Quarren, absently. Dankmere puffed away on his cigar and consulted his list: "Reynolds (Sir Joshua). Portrait of Lady Dankmere," he read; "portrait of Sir Boggs Dankmere!--string 'em up aloft over that jolly little lady with no frock on!--Rembrandt (Van Rijn). Born near Leyden, July 15th, 1607--Oh, who cares as long as it _is_ a Rembrandt!--Is it, Quarren? It isn't a copy, is it?"