"Yes, he told you just what he had been ordered to tell you. Brett believed I was coming--he was expecting me. I promised to go because he held some bills of Tony's--Tony had borrowed from him far more than he could pay. And Brett bargained with me that he would give them up if I would go to supper with him on the _Sphinx_." The whole story came tumbling out in quick, vivid sentences. In a few moments Eliot was in possession of all the facts which lay behind his discovery of Cara on the yacht. "So Cara had taken your place." There was a strange new gentleness in his voice as he spoke of the woman who had first broken and then built up his life again. "Yes. I was afraid--afraid that if you knew I had been there, you would believe--what you believed once before." A stifled ejaculation broke from him. "You thought that?" he said, his voice suddenly roughened by pain. "Oh, my dear, do you think I haven't learned my lesson--yet?" She looked at him doubtfully. "How could I know? Oh, Eliot"--with tragic poignancy--"how could I _know_?" For a moment the man and woman stood looking at each other in silence, separated once more by the grey shadow which had fallen again between them--the shadow of an old distrust. All at once Eliot's pain-wrung face relaxed. "Didn't you get my note?" he asked eagerly. "Didn't Cara give it you?" "Your--note?" For an instant Ann was puzzled. Then she remembered. Cara had said there was a note for her. At the time she had assumed it was a note from Brett, and in listening to the history of all that had taken place upon the yacht she had never given it another thought. She turned to the sheaf of bills still lying on the table. Yes, it was there, hidden beneath the bill which she had picked up to examine, afterwards replacing it on the top of the pile. She unfolded the note and read it in silence, and, as she read, the grey shadow which had dimmed even the radiance of love itself unfurled its wings and fled away. There could never be any more questioning or doubt. She knew now that Eliot's faith in her was perfected. He had written this--these words of utter trust--in circumstances which might have shaken the belief of almost any man. And his faith had remained steadfast. Love, which casteth out fear, had cast out this last fear of all. "Eliot"--Ann's voice broke a little--"you've given me the one thing I still needed--the absolute certainty of your faith in me." "I believe in you as I believe in God," he answered simply. He drew her into his arms. "And you, beloved--do you know what you have done for me? You have closed the gates of memory, shown me the way into the 'happy garden'--given me beauty for ashes." A silence fell between them. But it was the silence of complete and perfect understanding. Together they would go forth into the future, unafraid.