How small a chance it is that she has fallen among people who will protect her! A girl with her beauty, and so simple, so trustful--friends, indeed! I am all but frenzied to think of the dangers that may surround her.

She is more to me than my life's blood, and perhaps even now she is in terrible need of some honest man to protect her.

And you can talk coldly about prudence, about what we shall think and say years hence! Well, I can talk no more.

To-morrow morning I shall go back to London and go on searching for her, walking about the streets day and night, wearing my life away in longing for her.

I have done with the past, and all those I used to call my friends.