It seemed as though he were living that moment over again now, as he lay
here on the cot in the darkness--his eagerness as he had recognised the
well-known hand amongst the pile of correspondence, the thrill akin to
tenderness with which he had opened the note; and then the utter misery
of it all, the room swirling about him, the blind agony in which he had
risen from his chair, and, as he had groped his way from the room, the
sudden, pitiful anxiety on the faithful old Jason's face, which, even in
his own distress, he had not failed to note and understand and be
grateful for.
There had been only a few words in the note, and those few carefully
chosen, guarded, like the notes of old, lest they should fall into a
stranger's hand; but he had read only too clearly between the lines. She
had had only far too much more reason for fear than she had admitted to
him; and those fears had crystallised into realities. One sentence in
the note stood out above all others, a sentence that had lived with him
since that morning months ago, the words seeming to visualise her, high
in her courage, brave in the unselfishness of her love: "Jimmie, I must
not, I cannot, I will not bring you into the shadows again; I must fight
this out alone.
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