"Mina de l'Agua.

"Nancy,—The years and the yearning are over. I am leaving for Europe. You will come to meet me in Genoa; and we shall sit on the balcony where three years ago you told me of your Book, which you feared would die like a babe unborn in your breast.

"I am coming to take you to Porto Venere, 'white in the sunshine—tip-tilted over the sea'; and the Book shall live at last.

"And we, also, shall live. Oh, Nancy, Nancy! I have been a silent and a lonely man so long, that my love has no words, my happiness no language. Even now I can hardly believe that the years of exile and solitude are over. But I know that you, having loved me once, still love me and will love me. I know that your heart is not a heart that changes, and that the words that drew you to me across the ocean three years ago will bring you to me again. Nancy, come to me. To my empty arms, to my sad and solitary heart, Nancy, come at once. And for ever."

"Dear Ogre, dear friend and love of mine, your call has shaken my soul. All my longings, all my dreams, have joined their voices with yours, crying to me to go to you. Alas! a little prayer that FrÄulein used to make me say when I was a child whispers to me, and its small voice drowns the cry of my desires. It is the prayer of the Three Angels that stand round one's bed in the night:

"'One holds my hands, One holds my feet,
And the Third One holds my heart.'

"Can I come to you when I am thus bound—bound hands and feet by Law and Church? My small conventional soul shrinks from the unlawful and the forbidden.

"But, believe me, were I free as air, were my hands unbound to lie in yours, my feet unloosed to fly to you, the Third Angel remains. 'And the Third One holds my heart.' Anne-Marie is the Third Angel. Anne-Marie holds my heart. How could I bring her with me? Think and reply for me. How could I leave her? Think and reply. Dear Ogre, I am one of the Devoured. Little Anne-Marie has devoured me, and it is right that it should be so; she has absorbed me, and I am glad; she has consumed me, and I am grateful. For it is in the nature of things that to these lives given to us, our lives should be given. What matter that I fall back into the shadow—my course not run, my goal not reached, my mission unfulfilled? Anne-Marie will have what I have missed; Anne-Marie will reach the completeness that has failed me; for her will be the heights I have not conquered, the Glory I have not attained.

"Oh, lover and friend of mine, understand and forgive me. There is no room for love in my life. My life is full of haste and turmoil, full of Kings and Queens, full of rushing trains, and shouting voices, and clapping hands....

"Can you not see it all as in a picture—the Pied Piper whistling and dancing on ahead; little Anne-Marie, Fame-drunken, music-struck, whirlwinding after him; and I following them in breathless, palpitant haste, leaving all that was once mine behind me—my Books, my Dreams, my Love?... Love in the picture is not a rose-crowned god of laughter and passion. Love is a lonely figure, lonely and stern and sad. Oh, love, forgive me, and understand! And say good-bye—good-bye to Nancy!"

He forgave her, and understood, and said good-bye to Nancy.