That is why I chose you, warned you--" He stopped, and a sob rose in his breast.
"And at last you did yield," said Philip.
The inspector gazed at him for a moment in silence.

Then he said: "It was ten years ago, on her seventeenth birthday, that I made her a present of a little silver-bound autograph book, and on the first page of that book I wrote the words which saved her husband--and her.

Do you understand now, Philip?
It was her last card, and she played it well." He smiled faintly, and then said, as if to no one but himself, "God bless her!" He looked down on the big, tawny head that was bowed again upon the desk, and placed his hands on the other's shoulders.
"God bless her!" echoed Philip.
"You are not alone in your sorrows, Felix MacGregor," he said softly.
"You asked me if I was beauty-proof.

Yes, I am.

And it is because of something like this, because of a face and a soul that have filled my heart, because of a woman that is not mine, and never can be mine, because of a love which ever burns, and must never be known--it is because of this that I am beauty-proof.