Daunt to Margaret.

“New York, Sunday Morning.

“My Very Own!—Is that the way to begin a love letter? Anyhow, it is what I want to say. It is what I have called you a thousand times, to myself, since a one day far back—which I shall tell you about some time—when I made up my mind that you should love me. Does that sound conceited? Did you ever guess it? Over a year I have carried the thought with me; you have loved me only half that time.

“How I have watched your love unfolding! How I have hugged and treasured every new little leaf! I have been afraid so long to touch it; I wanted every petal full-blown, before I picked it, to be mine—mine, only mine, all mine, as long as I lived.

“Since I left you yesterday, to come up to this dismal city, I have been so happy that I have almost pinched myself to see if I were not asleep. To think that all my richest dreams have come true all at once!

“When I think of it, it makes me feel very humble. I shall be more ambitious. I am going to write better and truer. I must make you proud of me! I am going to work hard. No other man ever had such an incentive to grow—to catch up with ideals—as I have, because no other man ever had you to love.

“Yesterday I went directly from the train to the club. I pulled one of the big chairs into a shaded corner and closed my eyes to feel over and over again the deliciousness of the afternoon. I could feel your body in my arms and your head hard against my shoulder and—that first kiss. It has been on my lips ever since! I haven’t dared even to smoke for fear it might vanish!“All the while I had a curious, vivid, tumultuous sense as though I were in especially close touch with you. It seemed almost as if you wanted to tell me something, and that I couldn’t quite hear.

“After I went to bed I could not sleep for happiness; I wondered what you had been doing, saying, thinking, dreaming—whether you thought of me much, and, most of all, when you knelt down that night! Shall I always be in the ‘Inner Room,’ and shall you look in often?

“A letter is such a pitiful makeshift! I could go on writing pages! I want to put my arms around you and whisper it in your ear!

“The church-bells are ringing now. I can picture you sitting in the chapel, just as you do every Sunday, and, maybe sometimes, just a minute of course, stealing a little backward thought of me!

“Always in my mind, you will be linked with red roses, such as you wore then. To-day I am sending you down a hamper of them. I should like to think of you to-night as sleeping nestled up in them, and dreaming their perfume. I am longing to see you. I feel as though I wanted to roll the day up and push it away to get into to-morrow quicker.

“You will hardly be able to read this—my pen runs away with me; but I know you can read what is written over it all and between every two lines—that I love you, I love you wholly, unalterably.

“God keep you, safe and sound, dearest, always, always—for me!

“Richard.”

Margaret to Daunt.

“Monday.

“I am leaving this morning for a long visit. I cannot see you again. I have made up my mind suddenly—since I saw you Saturday afternoon, I mean. You will think this incomprehensible, I know, but, believe me, I must go.

“Think of me as generously as you can. This will hurt you, and to hurt you is the hardest part of it. Do not think that I have treated our association lightly. I could go upon my knees to beg you not to believe that I have been deliberately heartless. Remember me, not as the one who writes you this now, but as the girl who walked with you on the beach and who, for that one hour, thought she saw heaven opened.

“Margaret Langdon.”

Daunt to Margaret.

“Dear:—You must let me write you. You must listen! What does your letter mean? What is the reason? If there had been anything that could come between us, I know you well enough to believe you would have told me before. How can you expect me to accept such a dismissal? I don’t understand it. What is it that has changed you? What takes you from me? Surely I have a right to know. Tell me! You can’t intend to stay away. It’s monstrous! It’s unthinkable! Explain this mystery!

“I could not believe, when I received your letter to-day in the city, that you had written it. It seemed an evil dream that I must wake up from. Yet I have come back here to our summer haunt to find it true and you gone. You have even left me no address, and I must direct this letter to your city number, hoping it will be forwarded you.“How can you ask me to submit to a final sentence like this? I feel numbed and stung by the suddenness of it! I can’t find myself. I can do nothing but wrestle with the unguessable why of your going. It’s beyond me.

“After that one afternoon on the sands, after that delicious day of realization that my hopes were true—that you loved me—to be flung aside in a moment like an old glove, like a burnt-out match, with no word of explanation, of reason—nothing! It shan’t stay so! You can’t mean it! You are a woman, a true, sweet woman; you shan’t make me believe you a soulless flirt! There is something else—something I must know!

“I feel so helpless, writing to you. Space is a monster. If I could only see you for a single moment, I know it would be all right. Write to me. Tell me what I want to know. Until I hear something from you, I shall be utterly, endlessly miserable.

“R. D.”

Margaret to Daunt.

“I cannot come back, Richard. I cannot even explain to you why. Don’t humiliate me by writing me for reasons. You would not understand me. What good would it do to explain, when I can hardly explain it to myself? I only feel, and I am wretched.

“You must forget that afternoon! I am trying to do the right thing—the thing that seems right to myself. I must believe in my instinct; that is all a woman has. I know this letter doesn’t tell you anything—I can’t—there is no use—I can’t!

“You know one thing. You must know that that last day, when I kissed you, I did not think of this. I did not intend to go away then. That was all afterward. I had no idea of hurting or wronging you—not the slightest!

“I know this is incoherent. I read over what I have written and the lines get all jumbled up. Somehow it seems to mean nothing. And yet it means so much—oh, so horribly much!—to me.

“M.”

Daunt to Margaret.

“Dearest:—Please, please let me reason with you. Don’t think me ungenerous; bear with me a little. I must make you see it my way! I cheat myself with such endless guessing. Can I have grieved you or disappointed you? Have I shocked those beautiful white ideals of yours in any way? If that walk on the shore had been a month ago, if we had been together since, I might believe this; but we have not. That was the last, and you loved me then! I brought my naked heart to you that afternoon—it had been yours for long!—and laid it in your hand. You took it and kissed me, and I went away without it. Have you weighed it in the balance and found it wanting? Do you doubt what it could give you? Dear, let it try!

“To-day I walked up the old glen where the deserted cabin is. The very breeze went whispering of you and the rustling of every bush sounded like your name. The sky was duller and the grass less green. Even the squirrels sat up to ask where you were with the chestnuts you always brought them. Nothing is the same; I am infinitely lonely here, and yet I stay on where everything means you! When I walk it seems as if you must be waiting, smiling, just around every bend of the rock—just behind every clump of ferns—to tell me it was all a foolish fancy, that you love me and have not gone away! You are all things to me, dear. I cannot live without you. I want you—I need you so! I never knew how much before.

“Only tell me what your letters have not, that you do not love me—that you were mistaken—that it was all a folly, a madness—and I will never ask again! Ah, but I know you will not; you cannot. You do! You do! I have that one moment to remember when I held you in my arms, when your throat throbbed against my cheek, when your lips were on mine, when your arms went up around my head, and when I could feel your heart beating quick against me. Your breath was trembling and your eyes were like stars! Can you ask me to forget that, the moment that I seemed to have always lived and kept myself for?

“It’s impossible! This must be a passing mood of yours which will vanish. Love is a stronger thing than that! I don’t know the thing that is troubling you—I can’t guess it—but I am sure of you. I know you in a larger, deeper way, and in the end you will never disappoint me in that!

“I am hoping, longing, waiting. Let me come to you! Let me see you face to face, and read there what the matter is!

“Remember that I am still

“Your own,
“R.”

Margaret to Daunt.

“‘The Beeches,’ Warne.

“I have been touched by your last letter. I had not intended to write again, yet somehow it seems as if I must. Can you read between these lines that I am unhappy? I have been to blame, Richard, so much to blame; but I didn’t know it till afterward.

“I can’t answer your question; it isn’t whether I love you—it’s how. Doesn’t that tell you anything? I mustn’t be mistaken in the way. You must not try to see me; it would only make me more wretched than I am now, and that is a great deal more than I could ever tell you.

“M.”

Daunt to Margaret.

“If you won’t have any pity for yourself, for heaven’s sake have some for me! What am I to do? I haven’t any philosophy to bear on the situation. I can’t understand your objections. Your way of reasoning your emotions is simply ghastly. The Lord never intended them to be reasoned with! We can’t think ourselves into love or out of it either. At least I can’t. I’ve gone too far to go backward. Since you went I have been one long misery—one long, aching homesickness.

“You ask me not to ‘humiliate’ you by asking for your reasons. Don’t you think I am humiliated? Don’t you think I suffer, too? And yet it isn’t that; my love isn’t so mean a thing that it is my vanity that is hurt most. If I believed you didn’t love me, that might be; but if you could leave me as you have—without a chance to speak, with nothing but a line or two that only maddened me—you wouldn’t hesitate to tell me the truth now.“You do love me, Margaret! You’re torturing yourself and torturing me with some absurd hallucination. Forgive me, dear—I don’t mean that—only it’s all so puzzling and it hurts me so! I’m all raw and bleeding. My nerves are all jangles.

“I can only see one thing clearly—that you are wrong, and you’ll see it. Only somehow I can’t make you see it yet!

“Daunt.”

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