This that follows is probably what Vivie wrote to Michael.  He burnt the long letter when he had finished reading it though he made excerpts in a pocket-book.  But I can more or less correctly surmise how she would put her case; how she typed it herself in the solitude of two evenings; how, indeed, her nervous break-down was made the reason for fending off all clients and denying herself to all callers.

“I am not David Vavasour Williams.  I am Vivien Warren, the daughter of a woman who runs a series of disreputable Private Hotels on the Continent.  I had no avowed father, nor had my mother, who likewise was illegitimate.  She was probably the daughter of a Lieutenant Warren who was killed in the Crimea, and her mother’s name was Vavasour.  My grandmother was probably—­I can only deal with probabilities and possibilities in this undocumented past—­a Welsh woman of Cardiff, and I should not be surprised if I were a sort of cousin of the man I am personating.

“He was the ne’er-do-weel, only son of a Welsh vicar, a pupil of Praed’s, who went out to South Africa and died or was killed in the war.

“You have met my adopted father.  He fully believes I am the bad son, the prodigal son, returned and reformed.  He has grown to love me so much that it really seems to have put new life into him.  I have helped him to get his affairs straight, and I think I may say he has gained by this substitution of one son for another, even though the new son is a daughter!  I have taken none of his money, other than small sums he has thrust on me.  I have some money of my own, earned in Honoria’s firm, for I was the ‘Warren’ of her ’Fraser and Warren.’  She has known my secret all along, hasn’t quite approved, but was overborne by me in my resolve to show what a woman—­in disguise, it may be—­could do at the Bar.

“Michael!  I started out twelve years ago—­and the dreadful thing is I am now thirty-four in true truth! to conquer Man, and a man has conquered me!  I wanted to show that woman could compete with man in all careers, and especially in the Law.  So she can—­have I not shown it by what I have done?  But it is a drawn battle.  I have realized that if some men are bad—­rotten—­others, like you—­are supremely good.  I love you as I never thought I could love any one.  I cannot trust myself to write down how much I love you:  it would read shamefully and be too much a surrender of my first principle of self-respect.

“I am going to throw up the whole D.V.W. business.  It has put us in a false relation which was exasperating me and puzzling you.  Moreover the disguise was wearing very thin.  Only those two loyal souls, Honoria Fraser and Albert Adams, were cognizant of the secret, but it was being guessed at and almost guessed right, in certain quarters.  Professional jealousy was on my track.  I never fainted before in my life—­so far as I can remember—­but I might have done so elsewhere than in your dear house,