"I will tell you. On your word as a soldier, promise me to read this
manuscript from beginning to end, without asking me a question. Promise
me to read these notes in the same way, and promise me to listen to what
I have to tell later."

"I promise, if you wish it," he said pleasantly. "Give me the paper,
Hildred."

He began to read, raising his eyebrows with a puzzled, whimsical air,
which made me tremble with suppressed anger. As he advanced his, eyebrows
contracted, and his lips seemed to form the word "rubbish."

Then he looked slightly bored, but apparently for my sake read, with an
attempt at interest, which presently ceased to be an effort He started
when in the closely written pages he came to his own name, and when he
came to mine he lowered the paper, and looked sharply at me for a moment
But he kept his word, and resumed his reading, and I let the half-formed
question die on his lips unanswered. When he came to the end and read the
signature of Mr. Wilde, he folded the paper carefully and returned it to
me. I handed him the notes, and he settled back, pushing his fatigue cap
up to his forehead, with a boyish gesture, which I remembered so well in
school. I watched his face as he read, and when he finished I took the
notes with the manuscript, and placed them in my pocket. Then I unfolded
a scroll marked with the Yellow Sign. He saw the sign, but he did not
seem to recognize it, and I called his attention to it somewhat sharply.

"Well," he said, "I see it. What is it?"

"It is the Yellow Sign," I said angrily.