letter; please don’t say anything now. It is the letter you wrote me, you will remember, after I had asked you to marry me. You scribbled in the corner under your signature the initials “Y.S.O.A.”—do you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!—do you remember? Will you please get that letter at once?’ 

 ‘Arthur,’ answered the voice from without, empty of all expression, ‘what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless nonsense about a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a miserable form of persecution? Are you mad?—I refuse to get the letter.’ 

 Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. ‘I am not mad. Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the letter, if only for your own peace of mind.’ He heard his wife hesitate as she turned. He heard a sob. And once more he waited. 

 ‘I have brought the letter,’ came the low toneless voice again. 

 ‘Have you opened it?’ 

 There was a rustle of paper. ‘Are the letters there underlined three times—“Y.S.O.A.”?’ 

 ‘The letters are there.’ 

 ‘And the date of the month is underneath, “April 3rd.” No one else in the whole world, living or dead, could know of this but ourselves, Sheila?’ 

 ‘Will you please open the door?’ 

 ‘No one?’ 

 ‘I suppose not—no one.’ 

 ‘Then come in.’ He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark, rather handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark rich colour entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in shadow. He had still a moment’s respite. 

 ‘I need not ask you to be patient,’ he began quickly; ‘if I could possibly have spared you—if there had been anybody in the world to go to... I am in horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is inconceivable. I said I was sane: so I am, but the fact is—I went out for a walk; it was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and I think I was taken ill, or something—my heart. A kind of fit, a nervous fit. Possibly I am a little unstrung, and it’s all, it’s mainly fancy: but I think, I can’t help thinking it has a little distorted—changed my face; everything, Sheila; except, of course, myself. Would you mind looking?’ He walked slowly and with face averted towards the dressing-table. 

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