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 He was talking to himself now, seemed to forget me and my grave illness. "I might have thought of it though. From the first I pictured you two together. I have them. I took them... didn't you guess?" I forgot the extreme weakness of which I had complained, and caught hold of his coat sleeve, a little breathless.

"You took them... stole them?"

"Yes. If you put it that way. Who had a better right? I knew everything. Her father, her people, nothing, or very little. And she had not wished them to know."

"She was going to write the story, whatever it was; to publish it."

"No! not immediately, not until long afterwards, not until it would hurt no one. They were in the writing-table drawer, the letters, in an elastic band. She was not tidy as a rule with papers, but these were tidy. The diary was bound in soft grey leather, and there were a few rough notes; loose, on MS. paper. You know all that happened there; the excitement was intense. How could I bear her papers, his letters, her notes to fall into strange hands. I was doing what she would wish, I knew I was carrying out her wishes. The day she... she died I gathered them all together, slipped them into my greatcoat pocket; the car was at the door. I hurried away as if I had been a thief, the thief you are thinking me."