I, Anne Weston, confess to tricking Jim Maxwell and deceiving his wife at the instigation of Dan McGrew. McGrew hired Fingie Whalen and me to help him fool Mrs. Maxwell. I wrote the note signed "Jess." At the time when Mr. Maxwell was due to arrive in town, I was all ready, and as he came by fell from my horse as if I had fainted. He carried me into the saloon, and then Fingie gave him knock-out drops, and we fixed it up so that when McGrew came with Mrs. Maxwell and looked in at the window, it was as if we were loving together. But it was all a lie, worked out by Dan McGrew to make Mrs. Maxwell believe her husband was false to her.
Jim carried that paper in his pocket. It was the document with which he would prove to Lou how she had been deluded. But the days passed, and there came no opportunity to show her the sheet of paper on which Anne Weston had scrawled her confession. He used every means at his command, but he was powerless to gain any trace of the woman whom he had loved and lost through despicable treachery.
It was on the fourth day after Lou had fled her home, that Jim Maxwell seated himself at the piano in the living-room. Hitherto, he had been so occupied in the vain effort to find his wife that he had been, in some measure, unappreciative of the misery that was upon him. Now, when he had exhausted every resource of activity, he suddenly felt the desolation of his home--the ruin of his life. With his instinct toward the musical expression of moods, he took his place before the instrument.
Then, again, that glorious love-lyric came softly sonorous from the keys. The lilt of the melody rose and fell with a subtle vigor, instinct with the joy of life. The delicate tenderness of the music throbbed the story of a love complete and enduring. There was passion in the rhythm. It was a passion ennobled and purified by the intricate harmonies woven around and within it. It was a song of the spirit. It was overlaid with a splendor of sensuous sound. There was nothing gross--only the fullness of life.... Jim was playing with exquisite art that song of happiness which he had improvised on the day he received the news of Dan McGrew's coming.
Now, after he had followed the melody to its end, the truth, which during the moments of his playing he had forgotten, crashed upon him in a discord so horrible that he could not touch the keys to voice it--could only sit, moveless, listening to the din within his own soul in an ecstasy of despair.