"I was no longer on probation, no longer subject to his will alone. I was
a fully affiliated member. That day my name had been sent to the Chief.
This meant obedience on my part or a vengeance I felt it impossible to
consider. While I lived I need never hope again for freedom without
penalty.
"'While I lived'; the words rang in my ears. I did not need to weigh
them; I knew that they were words of truth. There is no power on earth
so inescapable as that exercised by a secret society, and this one has
a terrible safeguard. None but he who keeps the list knows the members.
You, Roger, might be one, and I never suspect it, unless you chose to
give me the sign. Knowing this, I realized that my life was not worth the
purchase if I sought to cross the will of my own brother. Nor yours,
either. It was the last thought which held me. While I dutifully
listened, my mind was working out the deception which was to release me,
and when I left him it was to take the first step in the complicated plot
by which I hoped to recover my lost happiness. And I nearly succeeded.
You have seen what I have borne, what difficulties I have faced, what
discoveries eluded, but this last, this greatest ordeal, was too much. I
could not listen unmoved to a description of my own drowned body. I, who
had calculated on all, had not calculated on this.
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