"Please finish your story first," she replied. "Then I will tell you mine."
"I have little to add. I could not bring myself to give up the letter until I was sure it was really yours. Lest anyone else should see it, I hid it where no one could find it. But when I came down from my room again, Mr. Wallace told me you had been in and had gone back to Taloona. So I kept it until I could be sure."
"Sure of what?"
"Whether—you had had it."
She laid it on the table in front of him.
"Take it," she said. "Do what you will with it. I am sorry you showed it to me. I would rather not have seen it. How it came where it was found I do not know. Until to-night I did not know it existed."
She met his glance openly, frankly, proudly.
"And you believed it was mine!" she added.
"I had no alternative—until I saw you," he answered.
"You have had that letter for weeks; I have been here three days. Yet you only come to me now—when I have asked you to come."