“Dear Harold,
“I have been behaving like a cad.
Your picture is an original Bronzino, worth quite enough to free you from all the difficulties brought about by the bank. Any copyist who could do such work could expend his time more profitably on a picture of his own. Besides, it’s a tour de force in colouring that no sane copyist would dream of imitating. Bronzino, I suppose, fancied his subject, and, like some other great painters, reproduced it in duplicate, with just the smallest amount of alteration that would serve to characterize and identify it.
“And now for my own part in this sorry business. It was a mean trick, but, thank Heaven, I hadn’t the strength, and, I hope, not the will to carry it through. You see I wanted her so badly that I couldn’t give her up even to you. And then the question of the picture turned up, and, unluckily, I found in it my opportunity. Till then, believe me, I had kept my honour safe. All of a sudden, the words she had used of me on Chapel hill, the night of the show, flashed across my mind, and I thought that, if you were out of the way for a time, I might win her still. And it was hard for me, you know, when I had waited for her all these years, and had come home at last to claim her, to find that you had won her love.
“Believe me, Harold, when I say I am sorry. I have sinned against the friend of my youth and the woman of my love. But try, old friend—not now but in the future—to win my pardon from Marion and yourself. You will have time to do so, for I leave England to-morrow for the East, and shall not return, if I ever do, till I can face your happiness without a thought of envy or regret. Don’t tell Marion more than you can help. Old friend, good-bye.
“Eric.”
