And I say to you perfectly frankly that now I care more for this friend of yours, Delancy Grandcourt, than I care for anybody in the world.

Which is why I write you to offer what I have offered, and to say that if my private fortune can carry you through the disaster which is so plainly impending, please write to my attorneys at once as they have all power in the matter." The postscript was dated ten days later, from Dysart's own house: "Receiving no reply, I telephoned you, but Brandon says you are away from the city on business and have left no address, so I took the liberty of entering your house, selecting this letter from the mass of nine days' old mail awaiting you, and shall direct it to you at the hotel in Baltimore where Bunny Gray says that somebody has seen you several times with a Mr.Skelton." As Dysart read, he wiped the chilly perspiration from his haggard face at intervals, never taking his eyes from the written pages.

And at last he finished his wife's letter, sat very silent, save when the cough shook him, the sheets of the letter lying loosely in his nerveless hand.
It was becoming plain to him, in a confused sort of way, that something beside bad luck and his own miscalculations, was working against him--had been stealthily moving toward his undoing for a year, now; something occult, sinister, inexorable.
He thought of the register at the hotel in Baltimore, of the name he lived under there during that interval in his career for which he had accounted to nobody, and never would account--on earth.

And into his memory rose the pale face of Sylvia Quest; and he looked down at the letter trembling in his hand and thought of her and of his wife and of the Algonquin Trust Company, and of the chances of salvation he had missed.
Grandcourt sat looking at him; there was something in his gaze almost doglike: "Have you read it ?" he asked.
Dysart glanced up abstractedly: "Yes." "Is it what I told you ?" "Yes--substantially." He dried his damp face; "it comes rather late, you know." "Not _too_ late," said the other, mistaking him; "your wife is still ready to meet you half-way, Jack." "Oh--that?
I meant the Algonquin matter--" He checked himself, seeing for the first time in his life contempt distorting Grandcourt's heavy face.
"Man! Man!" he said thickly, "is there nothing in that letter for you except money offered ?" "What do you mean ?" "I say, is there nothing in that message to you that touches the manhood in you ?" "You don't know what is in it," said Dysart listlessly.

Even Grandcourt's contempt no longer produced any sensation; he looked at the letter, tore it into long strips, crumpled them and stood up with a physical effort: "I'm going to burn this.