I loved you when I left you in Rome, I have loved you ever since, and I am afraid that I shall love you until I die.

“It is not foolish of me to write the words, though it may be wrong.  If I love you, it is because I know you.  We shall meet before long, and then meet, perhaps, hundreds of times, and more, for I am to live in Rome.  I know that you will be all you should be, or I would not speak now as I never spoke before, at the moment when I am raising an impassable barrier between us by my own free will.  If you ever loved me—­and you did—­you will respect that barrier in deed and word, and even in thought.  You will remember only that I loved you with all my heart on the day before my marriage.  You will forget even to think that I may love you still to-morrow, and think tenderly of you on the day after that.

“You are free now, dear, and can begin your real life.  How do I know it?  Del Ferice has told me that he has released you—­for we sometimes speak of you.  He has even shown me a copy of the legal act of release, which he chanced to find among the papers he had brought.  An accident, perhaps.  Or, perhaps he knows that I loved you.  I do not care—­I had a right to, then.

“So you are quite free.  I like to think that you have come out of all your troubles quite unscathed, young, your name untarnished, your hands clean.  I am glad that you answered the letter I wrote to you from Egypt and told me all, and wrote so often afterwards.  I could not do much beyond give you my sympathy, and I gave it all—­to the uttermost.  You will not need any more of it.  You are free now, thank God!

“If you think of me, wish me peace, dear—­I do not ask for anything nearer to happiness than that.  But I wish you many things, the least of which should make you happy.  Most of all, I wish that you may some day love well and truly, and win the reality of which you once thought you held the shadow.  Can I say more than that?  No loving woman can.

“And so, good-bye—­good-bye, love of all my life, good-bye dear, dear Orsino—­I think this is the hardest good-bye of all—­when we are to meet so soon.  I cannot write any more.  Once again, the last—­the very last time, for ever—­I love you.

     “Maria Consuelo.”

A strange sensation came over Orsino as he read this letter.  He was not able at first to realise much beyond the fact that Maria Consuelo was actually married to Del Ferice—­a match than which none imaginable could have been more unexpected.  But he felt that there was more behind the facts than he was able to grasp, almost more than he dared to guess at.  A mysterious horror filled his mind as he read and reread the lines.  There was no doubting the sincerity of what she said.  He doubted the survival of his own love much more.  She could have no reason whatever for writing as she did, on the eve of her marriage, no reason beyond the irresistible desire to speak out all her heart once only and for the last time.  Again and again he went over the passages which struck him as most strange.  Then the truth flashed upon him.  Maria Consuelo had sold herself to free him from his difficulties, to save him from the terrible alternatives of either wasting his life as Del Ferice’s slave or of ruining his family.