Joy Irving had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to rights, when the postman's ring sounded, and a moment later a letter was slipped under her door.

She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart's penmanship. She sat down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.

"It is Arthur's message, appointing a time and place for our meeting," she said to herself. "How long ago that strange interview with him seems!--yet it was only yesterday. How utterly the whole of life has changed for me since then! The universe seems larger, God nearer, and life grander. I am as one who slept and dreamed of darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and joy."

But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips. It was a brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address (a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing words).

"The first item which my eye fell upon in the telegraphic column of the morning paper, was the death of my wife in the Retreat for the Insane. I leave by the first express to bring her body here for burial.

"A merciful providence has saved us the necessity of defying the laws of God or man, and opened the way for me to claim you before all the world as my worshipped wife so soon as propriety will permit.

"I shall see you at any hour you may indicate after to-morrow, for a brief interview.

"ARTHUR EMERSON STUART."

Joy held the letter in her hand a long time, lost in profound reflection. Then she sat down to her desk and wrote three letters; one was to Mrs Lawrence; one to the chairman of the church committee, who had requested her resignation; the third was to Mr Stuart, and read thus:

"My Dear Mr Stuart,--Many strange things have occurred to me since I saw you. I have learned the name of my father, and this knowledge reveals the fact to me that your unfortunate wife was my half-sister. I have learned, too, that the loss of my position here as organist is not due to the narrow prejudice of the committee regarding the shadow on my birth, but to malicious stories put in circulation by Mrs Lawrence, relating to me.

"Infamous and libellous tales regarding my life have been told, and must be refuted. I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding a letter from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation of character. I have also written to the church committee requesting them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their demand for my resignation.

"I now write to you my last letter and my farewell.

"In the overwrought and desperate mood in which you found me, it did not seem a sin for me to go away with the man who loved me and whom I loved, before false ideas of life and false ideas of duty made him the husband of another. Conscious that your wife was a hopeless lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so long denied us.

"The last three years of my life have been full of desolation and sorrow. From the day my mother died, the stars of light which had gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated, until I stood in utter darkness. You found me in the very blackest hour of all--and you seemed a shining sun to me.

"Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able to think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of womanhood. It was another and less worthy man--and this other was to be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity. When I learned that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this fac............