first paragraph. It was not for the plot that she cared; she had read
too many stories to care for the plot; it was the problem involved. It
was one which she had so often pondered in her own mind that she felt, in
a way she hoped he would not think conceited, almost as if the story was
written for her. She had never been able to solve the problem; how he
would solve it she did not see how she could wait to know; and here she
made him a confidence without which, she said, she should not have the
courage to go on. She was an invalid, and her doctor had told her that,
though she might live for months, there were chances that she might die
at any moment suddenly. He would think it strange, and it was strange
that she should tell him this, and stranger still that she should dare to
ask him what she was going to ask. The story had yet four months to run,
and she had begun to have a morbid foreboding that she should not live to
read it in the ordinary course. She was so ignorant about writers that
she did not know whether such a thing was ever done, or could be done;
but if he could tell her how the story was to come out he would be doing
more for her than anything else that could be done for her on earth. She
had read that sometimes authors began to print their serial stories
before they had written them to the end, and he might not be sure of the
end himself; but if he had finished this story of his, and could let her
see the last pages in print, she would owe him the gratitude she could
never express.

The letter was written in an educated hand, and there were no foibles of
form or excesses of fashion in the stationery to mar the character of
sincerity the simple wording conveyed. The postal address, with the
date, was fully given, and the name signed at the end was evidently
genuine.

Verrian himself had no question of the genuineness of the letter in any