As to what any one could see I didn’t inquire, being too eager to open my telegram. Though I scarcely hoped that it could be from Vio my heart sank a little when I saw that it was not. "Come at once. Stay at the Normandy. Wait for me before seeing Violet. Explanations expected. J. DEWOLFE TORRANCE." The spirit of the letter was different. Bearing neither formal beginning nor signature, it was dated from the house in East Seventy-sixth Street. "I am so glad for your sake. Though I do not understand, I have confidence. I have always had confidence—without understanding. Some day, perhaps, you will tell me; but that shall be as you please. Just now I only want you to know that almost from the beginning of our acquaintance I thought you had a wife. I can’t tell you how or why the conviction was borne in on me; but it was. Possibly I was interested in you for her sake a little, with that kind of secret sisterhood which more or less binds all women together, and which is not inconsistent with the small mutual irritations we classify as feline. In any case I knew it—or I so nearly knew it as to be able to take it for granted. If you go back to your home, then, you will have more than my good wishes, you will both have them. Should there be anything to keep you apart you will have more than my good wishes still. Don’t ask me why I say these things, because I scarcely know. Don’t try to interpret me, either, for you are extremely likely to be wrong. In our talks together you must have seen that I am in rebellion against being bound by other people’s rules of conduct, and as far as I have the courage I brave the inferences drawn from what I do. My weakness is that I have not much courage. All the same, as I want to give you a kind of blessing in this new turn in your life, I keep repeating of you some words which I think must come from Tennyson: "’Go forth, and break through all, Till one shall crown thee, far in the spiritual city.’" This letter, too, made my leaving New York easier. Possibly it was written with that intent. "Don’t try to interpret me," she had said, and I saw the wisdom of following the counsel. As a matter of fact the new turn to the wheel taxed my mental resources to the utmost.