Another year slipped away.  As an official personage, my importance increased, but I was careful not to exaggerate it to myself.  Many have wondered (perhaps you among the rest) at my success, seeing that I possess no remarkable abilities.  If I have any secret, it is simply this—­doing faithfully, with all my might, whatever I undertake.  Nine-tenths of our politicians become inflated and careless, after the first few years, and are easily forgotten when they once lose place.

I am a little surprised now that I had so much patience with the Unknown.  I was too important, at least, to be played with; too mature to be subjected to a longer test; too earnest, as I had proved, to be doubted, or thrown aside without a further explanation.

Growing tired, at last, of silent waiting, I bethought me of advertising.  A carefully written “Personal,” in which Ignotus informed Ignota of the necessity of his communicating with her, appeared simultaneously in the “Tribune,” “Herald,” “World,” and “Times.”  I renewed the advertisement as the time expired without an answer, and I think it was about the end of the third week before one came, through the post, as before.

Ah, yes!  I had forgotten.  See! my advertisement is pasted on the note, as a heading or motto for the manuscript lines.  I don’t know why the printed slip should give me a particular feeling of humiliation as I look at it, but such is the fact.  What she wrote is all I need read to you: 

“I could not, at first, be certain that this was meant for me.  If I were to explain to you why I have not written for so long a time, I might give you one of the few clews which I insist on keeping in my own hands.  In your public capacity, you have been (so far as a woman may judge) upright, independent, wholly manly:  in your relations with other men I learn nothing of you that is not honorable:  toward women you are kind, chivalrous, no doubt, overflowing with the usual social refinements, but—­Here, again, I run hard upon the absolute necessity of silence.  The way to me, if you care to traverse it, is so simple, so very simple!  Yet, after what I have written, I can not even wave my hand in the direction of it, without certain self-contempt.  When I feel free to tell you, we shall draw apart and remain unknown forever.

“You desire to write?  I do not prohibit it.  I have heretofore made no arrangement for hearing from you, in turn, because I could not discover that any advantage would accrue from it.  But it seems only fair, I confess, and you dare not think me capricious.  So, three days hence, at six o’clock in the evening, a trusty messenger of mine will call at your door.  If you have anything to give her for me, the act of giving it must be the sign of a compact on your part that you will allow her to leave immediately, unquestioned and unfollowed.”