“I know that you will be disappointed in me, and just what that disappointment will cost you I know; but you must hear the truth.  I shall never see your face again, or I should not dare to tell it even now.  You will remember that I begged you to be easy on your servant.  You thought it was only my kindness of heart.  It was not; I had a deeper reason.  I knew where the money had gone and dared not tell.  Berry is as innocent as yourself—­and I—­well, it is a story, and let me tell it to you.

“You have had so much confidence in me, and I hate to tell you that it was all misplaced.  I have no doubt that I should not be doing it now but that I have drunken absinthe enough to give me the emotional point of view, which I shall regret to-morrow.  I do not mean that I am drunk.  I can think clearly and write clearly, but my emotions are extremely active.

“Do you remember Claire’s saying at the table that night of the farewell dinner that some dark-eyed mademoiselle was waiting for me?  She did not know how truly she spoke, though I fancy she saw how I flushed when she said it:  for I was already in love—­madly so.

“I need not describe her.  I need say nothing about her, for I know that nothing I say can ever persuade you to forgive her for taking me from you.  This has gone on since I first came here, and I dared not tell you, for I saw whither your eyes had turned.  I loved this girl, and she both inspired and hindered my work.  Perhaps I would have been successful had I not met her, perhaps not.

“I love her too well to marry her and make of our devotion a stale, prosy thing of duty and compulsion.  When a man does not marry a woman, he must keep her better than he would a wife.  It costs.  All that you gave me went to make her happy.

“Then, when I was about leaving you, the catastrophe came.  I wanted much to carry back to her.  I gambled to make more.  I would surprise her.  Luck was against me.  Night after night I lost.  Then, just before the dinner, I woke from my frenzy to find all that I had was gone.  I would have asked you for more, and you would have given it; but that strange, ridiculous something which we misname Southern honour, that honour which strains at a gnat and swallows a camel, withheld me, and I preferred to do worse.  So I lied to you.  The money from my cabinet was not stolen save by myself.  I am a liar and a thief, but your eyes shall never tell me so.

“Tell the truth and have Berry released.  I can stand it.  Write me but one letter to tell me of this.  Do not plead with me, do not forgive me, do not seek to find me, for from this time I shall be as one who has perished from the earth; I shall be no more.

                                             “Your brother,
          
                                                  frank.”