Stamps withdrew his hand from under the pillow. A stout, ill-directed envelope was in its grasp and he passed it over to Latimer. He was shivering and beginning to choke a little, but he grinned.

"I reckin' it's all right," he said. "D'ye want to read 'em now?"

"No," Latimer answered, and putting them in his breast-pocket walked out of the room.

He passed down the stairs and into the avenue where the lamps were lighted and which wore its usual somewhat deserted evening air. He walked along quietly for some minutes. He did not quite know where he was going.

Having left a line for Baird explaining his absence, he had time to spare. If he wished to be alone, he could be so until the hour of the beginning of the lecture. For certain reasons it would be necessary that he should see Baird before he went upon the platform. Yes, he must be alone. His mood required it. He would go somewhere and look at the two yellowed letters written twenty years ago. He did not know why it was that he felt he must look at them, but he knew he must. They would satisfy no curiosity if he felt it, and he had none. Perhaps it was the old tragic tender feeling for Margery which impelled him. Perhaps he unconsciously longed to read that this man had loved her--that she had not given her life for nothing--that the story had not been one of common caprice and common treachery. As he walked his varied thoughts surged through his brain disconnectedly. Every now and then he involuntarily put his hand to his breast-pocket to feel the envelope. Once there crossed his mind a memory of the woman whose boy had died and who dare not let herself recall him, and so be swept back into the black maelstrom of woe.

To-night, with these things on his breast, it was not twenty years since he had heard Margery's dying cries--it was last night--last night--and the odour of the pine-trees was in his nostrils--the sough of their boughs in his ears.

He stopped near the entrance to the grounds of the Smithsonian Institute.

They were as secluded as a private park at this time, but here and there was a seat and a light. He turned in and found his way to the most retired part where he could find these things--a bench to sit down on, a light to aid him to read. He heard his own breathing as he sat down; he felt the heavy, rapid pulsations of his heart, as he took the papers from his breast his hand was shaking, he could not hold it still. He took out more papers than the envelope Stamps had given him. He drew forth with this the letter which had arrived from Baird, and which he had been reading when the messenger arrived. He had abstractedly put it in his pocket. It fell from his shaking hand upon the ground at his feet, and he let it lie there, forgetful of its existence.

Then he withdrew the two letters from the large envelope and opened one of them.

He read them through once--twice--three times--four. Then he began again.

He had read them a dozen times before he closed them. He had read them word by word, poring over each character, each turn of phrase, as a man might pore over an enigma or a document written in a foreign language of which he only knew stray words. If his hands had shaken at first, he had not turned a page before his whole body was shaking and his palms, his forehead, his hair were damp with cold dew. He had uttered one sharp, convulsed exclamation like a suffocated cry--then he went on reading--reading--reading--and shuddering as he read. They were not long letters, but after he had read them once he understood them, and each time he read them again he understood them better. Yes, he could translate them. They were the farewells of a man tossed by a whirlwind of passionate remorseful grief. The child had been loved--her very purity had been loved while she had been destroyed and deceived. The writer poured forth heart-sick longing and heart-sick remorse. He had not at first meant to conceal from her that he was not a free man--then he had lost control over his very being--and he had lost his soul. When she had discovered the truth and had not even reproached him but had stood silent--without a word--and gazed at him with her childish, agonised, blue-flower eyes--he had known that if men had souls his was damned.

There was no pardon--he could ask none--pardon would not undo--death itself would not undo what he had done. "Margery! Margery! Oh! child--God hear me if there is God to hear--I loved you--I love you--Death will not undo that either."

He was going abroad to join his wife. He spoke of the ship he sailed on.

Latimer knew its name and who had sailed in it. In the second letter he besought her to let him see and speak one word to her--but knew she would not grant his prayer. He had seen her in the street, and had not dared to approach. "I did not fear what a man might fear from other women," he wrote. "I felt that it might kill you, suddenly to see me near when you could not escape."

And after he had read it a third time Latimer realised a ghastly truth.

The man who wrote had gone away unknowing of the blackness of the tragedy he had left behind. He plainly had not known the secret Death itself had helped to hide. Perhaps when he had gone Margery herself had not known the worst.

Latimer, having finished his reading, rested his head on his hand for a dull moment and stared down at the letter lying upon the ground at his feet--the letter he had dropped as he took out the others. He felt as if he had not strength or inclination to pick it up--he had passed through a black storm which had swept away from him the power to feel more than a dull, heavy, physical prostration.

But after a few minutes he stooped and picked the letter up. He laid it on his knee by the other two and sat gazing again.

"He did not know," he said, in a colourless voice. "I told him. He heard it first from me when I told him how she died."

The handwriting of the letters was Baird's--every character and word and phrase were his--Baird was the man who had written them.

CHAPTER XXXIX

The street in which the lecture hall stood began to wear the air of being a centre of interest some time before the doors of the building were opened. People who had not been able to obtain reserved seats wished to arrive early. The lectures which had begun by being popular had ended by being fashionable. At the outset an audience of sober, religious tendencies had attended them, but after the first one had been delivered other elements had presented themselves. There had been a sprinkling of serious scientific men, a prominent politician or so, some society women whose faces and toilettes were well-known and lavishly described in the newspapers. On this last night the audience was largely of the fashionable political world. Carriages drove up one after another and deposited well-dressed persons who might have been expected that night to appear at certain brilliant social functions, and who had come to hear "Repentance" instead.

"He has always had good audiences," said a member of the Committee of Arrangement, "but he has never had one like this--in Washington at least.

There is the Secretary of State with his wife and daughter. I believe the President is to be here. He has awakened an enormous interest. The house will be literally crammed. They are filling the aisle with seats already."

Baird was in the small retiring-room which had been arranged for his convenience. His journey had somewhat fatigued him, and he was in the physical and mental condition to feel glad that this lecture was to be the last of the series. He was going back to Willowfield, though he was not to remain there. He had received a call from an important church in New York and had accepted it. He was endeavouring to make arrangements that Latimer could be near him. On his return this evening he had found a letter he had been expecting. It referred to Latimer, and he was anxious to talk it over with him. He wished he would come in, and felt a little restless over his delay, though he knew they would have time to say but few words to each other before it was time for the lecture to begin. He walked up and down the room looking down at the green carpet and thinking, his thoughts wandering vaguely to the little pursuant of the herd claim and the letters he had wanted to deliver. He smiled faintly, remembering the small frame in the over-large clothes and the bucolic countenance with its over-sharpness of expression.

The member of the committee looked into the room.

"They are beginning to turn people away from the doors," he said. "Half the Cabinet is here--I never saw such an audience."

As he went away smiling, someone passed him in entering the room. Baird, who was smiling also, changed his expression of courteous appreciation to a smile of greeting, for the man who had entered was Latimer.

He advanced, holding out his hand.

"I am glad you have come," he began to say. "I wanted at least a word with you before I went on."

Then his smile died out, leaving blank amazement which a breath's space later was alarmed questioning. He recalled later how for a second he stood and stared. Latimer's face was white and damp with sweat. Its lines were drawn and sunken deep. His eyes were fixed on the man before him with something which had a ghastly resemblance to an unsteady smile which was not a smile at all. He looked as if illness--or death--or madness had struck him. He did not seem a sane man, and yet a stillness so deadly was expressed by his whole being that it seemed to fill the small, neat, business-like green-room.

Baird strode towards him and seized him by the shoulder.

"What is it? What is it? What is it?" he cried out.

Latimer's face did not alter in a line. He fumbled stiffly in his breast-pocket and held out some pieces of yellowed letter-paper--this being done stiffly, too. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. It seemed to search every corner of the room and echo there.

"See!" he said. "These are two letters. A man wrote them to a poor, half-mad child twenty years ago."

The door opened, and the member of the committee looked in again, radiant with exultation.

"The audience waiting in such breathless silence that you might hear a pin drop. Two thousand of them, if there's one. Ten minutes to eight."

"Thank you," answered Baird.

The door closed again and he stood looking at Latimer's rigid hand and the papers.

"They were written to Margery," went on Latimer. "Stamps found them in a chink in the logs. She had hidden them there that she might take them out and sob over and kiss them. I used to hear her in the middle of the night."

Baird snatched them from his hand. He fell into a chair near the table and dropped his face upon the yellowed fragments, pressing them against his lips with awful sobbing sounds, as if he would wrest from them the kisses the long-dead girl had left there.

"I, too!" he cried. "I, too! Oh! my God! Margery!"

"Don't say 'God!'" said Latimer. "When she was dying, in an agony of fear, she said it. Not that word! Another!"

He said no other--and Latimer drew nearer to him.

"You wrote them," he said. "They are written in your hand--in your words--I should know them anywhere. You may deny it. I could prove nothing. I do not want to prove anything. Deny it if you will."

Baird rose unsteadily. The papers were clutched in his hand. His face was marred by the unnaturalness of a man's tears.

"Do you think I shall deny it?" he answered. "It is true. I have sat and listened to your talk of her and thought I should go quite mad. You have told me of her tortures, and I have listened. I did not know--surely she did not know herself--of the child--when I went away. It is no use saying to you--how should it be?--that I loved her--that I was frenzied by my love of her innocent sweetness!"

"No, there is no use," answered Latimer, in a voice actually void of emotion, "but I daresay it is true."

"There is no use in calling myself by any of the names invented for the men who bring about such tragedies. They are true of some men perhaps, but they were not true of me. I don't know what was true of me. Something worse than has ever been put into words perhaps, for I loved her and I have loved her for twenty years. I would have given up my career--my life, anything she had asked!"

"But when she found you had acted a lie to her----"

"It seemed to fill her with the frantic terror of a child. I dare not approach her. I think she thought she would be struck dead by Heaven.

Great God! how I understood your story of her prayers. And it was I--it was I!"