Marsh did not reply, but, after a keen glance round, as if to make sure there was no lurking onlooker, he let the handkerchief drop to the ground, and then, dropping on one knee, he set it alight with a match from his fusee box.

Drelincourt, his back supported by a tree, stood looking on in silence till the flame had burned itself out, and nothing was left save a little fine ash, which a wandering breeze presently caught up and frolicked off with into the depths of the wood.

"This also I found," resumed Roden. "It was lying open on the writing table in your dressing room at the Towers for anybody to see. It is in your writing, and is dated today."

As he spoke, he produced a letter from his breast pocket and handed it to Drelincourt, who took it mechanically and a half dazed man. It was without an envelope, and was simply folded in two. Opening it, he read it in silence and with growing amazement.

"An unfinished letter to my friend, Professor Ridsdale. And you say that you found it in my dressing room at the Towers?"

"I do."

"It refers to certain chemical experiments in which my friend and I are interested. It is the very letter, almost word for word, which I made up my mind to write to him the first thing after breakfast this morning.. And yet I slept last night at the Cot, while you found this an hour or more ago at the Towers!"

Again the eyes of the two met in pregnant silence.

"Rodd, you must have guessed the truth?"

"I have, Felix." "Yes, no other explanation is possible. Yet it seems monstrous--unbelievable. And by my hand! Oh!"

He ended with a groan, turned his face aside, and was silent. For once this man, usually so proudly self-centered, so stoically self-repressed, was moved to the depths of his soul as never in his life before.

Crossing to him, Roden Marsh grasped one of his hands in both his own.

"Felix, between you and me not a word more is needed--I comprehend. You have suffered. Your life has been made a burden almost too bitter to be borne. I have seen and known it for long. I have suffered with your sufferings; my heart has bled for you times without number. I can speak now; hitherto I have had to look on and be dumb."

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