“You—­in this room!” Helen May caught her breath.  “Why—­why, you couldn’t have!  I never wrote any revolution stuff in my life!  Why—­I don’t know the first thing about Las Nuevas, as you call it.  How could my writing—?” She caught her breath again, for she remembered.

“Why, Starr of the desert, that was Holman Sommers’ writing you saw!  I remember now.  Some pages of his manuscript blew off the desk when you were here.  See, I can show you a whole pile of it!” She ran to the desk, Starr following her mechanically.  “See?  All kinds of scientific junk that he wanted typed.  Isn’t that the writing you meant?  Isn’t it?” Her hands trembled so that the papers she held close to Starr’s face shook, but Starr recognized the same symmetrical, hard-to-read chirography.

“Yes, that’s it.”  His voice was so husky that she could hardly hear him.  He moistened his lips, that had gone dry.  Was it possible?  His mind kept asking over and over.

“And here!  I don’t ask you to take my word for it—­I know that just those pages don’t prove anything, because I might have written that stuff myself—­if I knew enough!  But here’s a lot that he sent over by the stage driver yesterday.  I haven’t even opened it yet.  You can see the same handwriting in the address, can’t you?  And if he has written a note—­he does sometimes—­and signed it—­he always signs his name in full—­why, that will be proof, won’t it?” Her eyes burned into his and steadied a little his whirling thoughts.

“Open it, desert man!  Open it, and see if there’s a note!  And you can ask the stage driver, if you don’t believe me; here, break the string!”

She was now more eager than he to see what was inside the wrapping of newspaper.  “See?  That’s an El Paso paper—­and I don’t take anything but the Times from Los Angeles!  Oh, goody!  There is a note!  You read it, Starr.  Read it out loud.  If that doesn’t convince you, why—­why I can prove by Vic—­”

Starr had unfolded the sheet of tablet paper, and Helen May interrupted herself to listen.  Starr’s voice was uneven, husky when he tried to control the quiver in it.  And this he read, in the handwriting of which he had such bitter knowledge: 

“My Dear Miss Stevenson: 

“I am enclosing herewith a part of Chapter Two, which I have revised considerably and beg you to retype for me.  If you have no asterisk sign upon your machine, will you be so kind as to make use of the period sign to indicate a break in the context of the quotations from the various authors whom I have cited?

“I wish to inform you that I am deeply sorry to place this extra burden of work upon you, and also assure you that I am more than delighted with the care you have exercised in deciphering correctly my most abominable chirography.

“May I also suggest, with all due respect to your intelligence and with a keen appreciation of the potent influences of youth and romance upon even the drudgery of an amanuensis, that in writing “stars of the universe” in a scientific document, the connotation is marred somewhat when stars is spelled “Starr’s.”