“You gave me a terrible scare to-night,” she said, endeavoring to speak lightly, “and then, to make matters worse, you ran away.  It was not like you to do that.”

“I could not bring myself to mar the further happiness of your night,” he explained, feeling the words choke in his throat as he uttered them.  “My being present at the Opera House was all a mistake; I did not dream it was you until too late.  But the supper was another thing.”

She looked intently at him, her expression clearly denoting surprise.

“I really cannot believe you to be as indifferent as you strive to appear,” she said at last, her breath quickening.  “One does not forget entirely in three short years, and I—­I caught that one glimpse of you in the box.  It was that—­that look upon your face which gave me courage to send my card to your room.”  She paused, dropping her eyes to the carpet, her fingers nervously playing with the trimming of her waist.  “It may, perhaps, sound strange, yet in spite of my exhibit of feeling at first discovering your presence, I had faith all day that you would come.”

“Is it possible you mean that you wished me there?”

“Quite possible; only it would have been ever so much better had I known before.  It actually seemed when I saw your face to-night as if God had brought you—­it was like a miracle.  Do you know why?  Because, for the first time in three years, I can welcome you with all my heart.”

“Beth, Beth,” utterly forgetting everything but the mystery of her words, his gray eyes darkening from eagerness, “what is it you mean?  For God’s sake tell me!  These years have been centuries; through them all I have been waiting your word.”

She drew in her breath sharply, reaching out one hand to grasp the back of a chair.

“It—­it could not be spoken,” she said, her voice faltering.  “Not until to-day was it possible for me to break the silence.”

“And now—­to-day?”

She smiled suddenly up at him, her eyes filled with promise.

“God has been good,” she whispered, drawing from within the lace of her waist a crumpled envelope,—­“oh, so good, even when I doubted Him.  See, I have kept this hidden there every moment since it first came, even on the stage in my changes of costume.  I dared not part with it for a single instant—­it was far too precious.”  She sank back upon the chair, holding out toward him the paper.  “Read that yourself, if my tears have not made the lines illegible.”

He took it from her, his hands trembling, and drew forth the enclosure, a single sheet of rough yellow paper.  Once he paused, glancing toward where she sat, her face buried in her arms across the chair-back.  Then he smoothed out the wrinkles, and read slowly, studying over each pencil-written, ill-spelled word, every crease and stain leaving an impression upon his brain: 

“SAN JUAN, COL., DEC. 12, 1904.