I smiled. "No, not Daphne," I answered. "Our friend, Miss Wade. She has
extraordinary insight."

"I could trust anything to Miss Wade. She is true as steel."

"You are right," I answered. "That shows that you, too, are a judge of
character."

He hesitated. "I feel a brute," he cried, "to go on writing every day
to Sissie Montague--and yet calling every day to see Miss Tepping. But
still--I do it."

I grasped his hand. "My dear fellow," I said, "nearly ninety per cent.
of men, after all--are human!"

I took both letter and photograph back with me to Nathaniel's. When I
had gone my rounds that night, I carried them into Hilda Wade's room and
told her the story. Her face grew grave. "We must be just," she said at
last. "Daphne is deeply in love with him; but even for Daphne's sake, we
must not take anything for granted against the other lady."

I produced the photograph. "What do you make of that?" I asked. "_I_
think it an honest face, myself, I may tell you."

She scrutinised it long and closely with a magnifier. Then she put her
head on one side and mused very deliberately. "Madeline Shaw gave me her
photograph the other day, and said to me, as she gave it, 'I do so like
these modern portraits; they show one WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.'"