“Because he believes that it is still possible for you and me to return to civilised relations; he believes that I care for you, that, in your own leisurely and superficial fashion, you still really honour the vows that bound you—­still in your heart care for me.  Let him believe it; and if you will, for his sake, let us resume the surface semblance of a common life which, until he persuaded me, I was determined to abandon.

“It is an effort to write this; I do it for his sake, and, in that way, for yours.  I don’t think you care about me; I don’t think you ever did or ever will.  Yet you must know how it was with me until I could endure my isolation no longer.  And I say to you perfectly frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world.  Which is why I write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have all power in the matter.”

The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart’s own house: 

“Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass of nine days’ old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen you several times with a Mr. Skelton.”

As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages.  And at last he finished his wife’s letter, sat very silent, save when the cough shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand.

It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against him—­had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now; something occult, sinister, inexorable.

He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had accounted to nobody, and never would account—­on earth.  And into his memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had missed.

Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost doglike: 

“Have you read it?” he asked.

Dysart glanced up abstractedly:  “Yes.”

“Is it what I told you?”

“Yes—­substantially.”  He dried his damp face; “it comes rather late, you know.”

“Not too late,” said the other, mistaking him; “your wife is still ready to meet you half-way, Jack.”