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“Isn’t,” she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was hardly more than a whisper, “isn’t it signed?”

Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew it bore no signature. We gazed into each other’s eyes for many seconds until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said–and the words seemed to drop from my lips unthought–“It didn’t have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, although the handwriting is disguised.”

Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick pavement with her tiny boots–and tremble.

“I–I had to write it,” she began to reply, and her words, though they quivered, were as mechanical as mine. “He was so–so–imprudent–my husband’s happiness required—-“

I stopped her. “Please don’t say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but– not that, please.” I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told her what ebb tides she had given that husband’s happiness; what he had been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine.

She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. “You wouldn’t despise me if you knew the half I’ve suffered or how I’ve striv– –“

I interrupted again. “O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman–at thirty- five–knows it all–himself. And he had better go and cut his throat than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep she cannot retrace.”

Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, “I will retrace it.”

“I have kept you here a good while,” I said. “After a moment or so drop your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we’ll not do that, but as soon as I get into the house I’ll burn it.”

“I can trust you,” she replied, “but—-“

“What; the Baron–when he misses it? O I’ll settle that.”

She gave a start as though I had shouted.

I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed to me worse. “Isn’t it my duty,” she asked–and her eyes betrayed unconsciously the desperateness of her desire–“to explain to him myself?”

I answered with a question. “Would that be in the line of retracement, Mrs. Fontenette?”

“It would!” she responded, with solemn eagerness. “O it would be! It shall be! I promise you!”

“Mrs. Fontenette,” said I, “consider. If his wife”–she flinched; she could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen–“if his wife-or your husband”–she bit her lip–“knew all–would they think that your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?”

Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone.

“My friend,” I continued, “you must not think me meddlesome–officious. I can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within me, I know, better than you, that you-and he–are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows.” …