He tapped on the panel. 'Sheila,' he said softly, 'I want you
first, before you come in, to get me something out of my old
writing-desk in the smoking-room. Here is the key.' He pushed a
tiny key--from off the ring he carried--beneath the door. 'In the
third little drawer from the top, on the left side, is a letter;
please don't say anything now. It is the letter you wrote me, you
will remember, after I had asked you to marry me. You scribbled
in the corner under your signature the initials "Y.S.O.A."--do
you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!--do you remember?
Will you please get that letter at once?'

'Arthur,' answered the voice from without, empty of all
expression, 'what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless
nonsense about a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a
miserable form of persecution? Are you mad?--I refuse to get the
letter.'

Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. 'I am not
mad. Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the
letter, if only for your own peace of mind.' He heard his wife
hesitate as she turned. He heard a sob. And once more he waited.

'I have brought the letter,' came the low toneless voice again.

'Have you opened it?'

There was a rustle of paper. 'Are the letters there underlined
three times--"Y.S.O.A."?'

'The letters are there.'