"My Darling:
"I am ill: threatened with a fever. No one but Lorette is with me. I am longing for you, and I am alarmed about you. You never remained so long away from me before, without sending me some message. The thought that you may be ill, and that I am not near you to minister to your needs, is maddening. Write to me, dear, and if you can, come to your sick and lonely
"Dolores."
He was by her side within an hour. She reached out her arms, and pillowed her flushed face on his breast, weeping softly.
"Oh, Love!" she murmured. "I have felt so lonely, so deserted these last days. I think I have realized just what life would be without you: it would be an agony of desolation. I could not live."
Percy's heart writhed within him, as he stroked the beautiful head and soothed her with kind words. How could he ever stab that loving heart by telling her the change that had come over him—a change as thorough as it was sudden; a change that was the dawn of a possible new life for him.
"I cannot. It is too late; it would be more cruel than murder," he said to himself, and he drew Dolores into his arms, and comforted her as he would have comforted a sick child. She asked no explanation of his absence, and he made none.
Within a week he had carried her away to a quiet country resort, where she soon regained her health. But during her illness, there came to her, through the clairvoyant power of a loving heart, the knowledge that some mysterious change had taken place in Percy. He was kind, oh, very kind; so careful of her bodily comfort, so solicitous for her welfare.
And yet—what was it?