Then and there I sat down and wrote a brief letter to my father. “I have only within the last few days,” I said, “learned of the letter you wrote me three months ago. Jason destroyed it lest I should find out he was married to Zyp. I now tell you that I am ready to do as you wish--to return and live with you, if you still desire it. In any case, I can endure my present life here no longer. Upon receipt of a word from you I will come.” As I wrote, the wind, bringing clouds of rain with it, was booming and thundering against the window. Soft weather had succeeded to the ice-breathing blasts of a few days back, and I thought of a lonely grave out there in the night of London, and of how just now the water must be gushing in veins and runnels over its clayey barrow. Dolly--Dolly! May it wash clean your poor wounded heart. “After life’s fitful fever” you sleep well; while we--oh, shamed and fallen child! Which of us who walks straightly before our fellows would not forego passion and revenge, and all the hot raptures of this blood-red world, to lie down with you deep in the cool, sweet earth and rest and forget? I went out and posted my letter. The streets were swept clean of their human refuse. Only a few belated vehicles trundled it out against the downpour, setting their polished roofs as shields against the myriad-pointed darts of the storm. Feeling nervous and upset, I was approaching my own door, when a figure started from a dark angle of the wall close by and stood before me. “Duke!” I cried. He was drenched with rain and mud--his dark clothes splashed and saturated from boot to collar. His face in the drowned lamplight was white as wax, but his eyes burned in rings of shadow. I was shocked beyond expression at his dreadful appearance. “What have you been doing with yourself?” I cried. “Duke! Come in, for pity’s sake, and rest, and let us talk.” “With you?” he muttered, in a mad, grating voice. “With any Trender? I came to ask you where he’s in hiding--that’s all.” “I know no more than you do.” “You lie! You’re keeping his secret for him. What were her claims compared to family ties--devil’s ties--such as yours? You know, but you won’t give him up to me.” “I don’t know.” He raised and ground his hands together in exquisite passion. “They drive me to madness,” he cried, “but in the end--in the end I shall have him! To hold him down and torture the life out of him inch by inch, with the terror in his eyes all the time! Why, I could kill him by that alone--by only looking at him.” He gloated over the picture called up in his soul. If ever demon’s eyes looked from a human face, they looked from his that night. “Duke,” I whispered in horror, “you have terrible cause for hate, I know; but oh, think of how one grain of forgiveness on your part would stand you with--with God, Duke.” He gave a wretched, sickening laugh. “By and by,” he cried. “But tell me first where he’s hiding!”