He opened her closet in a mechanical way, and started back as if some one had struck him when he saw all the beautiful dresses which he had taken so much pride in purchasing hanging before him and nicely protected from dust by a sheet which had been fastened over them. Did she imagine he would ever allow any one else to wear them? He went to her bureau and opened the drawers one by one, and he could readily see that whatever had been purchased with his money had been left behind. “Oh!” he groaned, “how they must have wounded and humiliated her to have made her discard everything that I had given her!” He lifted the lid of a jewel casket, which he had also purchased for her, expecting to find there the jewels which he had so liked to see her wear. But the velvet cushion was bare and his heart gave a great bound. She had not, then, utterly repudiated everything, and this thought comforted him a little. Then a great trembling seized him as he caught sight of a letter pinned to the satin-lined cover of the box. It was addressed to him, and with quivering fingers he detached it and tore the contents from the envelope. “MY DEAR HUSBAND,” it began, but tears sprang to his eyes, and so blurred was his sight that for a few moments he could not go on with his reading. “Let me call you so for this last time,” he read when he could see again; “yes, for the last time, for I am going away from you forever. I can see now that it was a great mistake, your marrying me. I was afraid at the time that you were influenced merely by gratitude. I am so sorry now that I had not strength to say no when you urged me to be your wife. If you had but told me truly that it was not love, but pity for my desolate condition and a desire to care for me when I was unable to take care of myself, it would have been so much easier and better every way. Then, too, you were pledged to another, and that made a triple wrong. It breaks my heart to think of it and that some other poor girl, who loved you as blindly, perhaps, as I have done, has been grieving over your broken troth. And now you have banished me from your home, as if you believed me unworthy to remain there. What is my offence, True? Did I not make my explanations clear enough in the letter I wrote you a little more than a week ago? Is it true that because I withheld my true surname—and, True, I had almost forgotten I had any other save that of Howland—is it true, as your mother says, that our marriage was illegal—that I am no wife? Is that why you have sent me away? If you had only written to me and explained, instead of sending me that dreadful cable message. Instead of the word I begged for—stay—you have told me to go. Perhaps you will write now, but since you were in such a hurry to have me go; since you appear to fear a scandal, and I know that you did not love me—though you seemed to—I shall not wait for any cold, cruel letter confirming my fate, but take myself utterly away from you at once.