"But, my darling love, do not think for a moment that I want to bind you to me against your will. God only knows how deeply I love you; during the last three years the thought of you has been the sunshine of my days, the light of my nights. If, when you have received and pondered over this letter, you send me a reply to say that you still love me, that you will be true to me and will wait for my return, then you will change my world into a paradise. No work will be too hard, no difficulty too great to surmount, if it will help me the sooner to come back to you. But if, on the other hand, you tell me or leave me to guess that I am a fool for thinking that you would waste your beauty and your sweetness on waiting for a good-for-nothing scamp like me, why, then, I shall understand. I shall go out to America—or wherever that place called Australia may be—but maybe I shall never come back. But I should never curse you, dear heart, I should never cease to love you: I should quite understand.
"I have got one of the nurses at the hospital to write this letter for me, to put my rough words into good Hungarian and to write down my thoughts in a good, clear hand. That is how it comes to be so well written. You know I was never much of a hand with a pen and paper, but I do love you, my dove! My God, how I love you.
"The nurse says that Australia is not in America at all—that it is a different place altogether. Well! I do not care where it is. I am going there because there I can earn one hundred florins a month, and save enough in two years to marry you and keep you in comfort. But I shall not see you, my dove, before I go: if I saw you again, if I saw Hungary again, our village, our alföld, Heaven help me! but I don't think I would have the heart to go away again.
"Farewell, dear heart, I go away full of hope. We go off next week in a big, big ship from here. I go full of sadness, but if you do want me to come back just write me a little letter with the one word 'Yes,' and address it as above. Then will my sadness be changed to heavenly joy and hope. But if it is to be 'No,' then tell me so quite truly, and I will understand.
"Then, as now, may God protect you, my dove, my heart,
"Your ever-devoted
"Andor."
The letter fell out of Elsa's hands on to her knee. She took no heed of it, she was staring out into the immensity far away, into the fast-gathering gloom. Two years ago! Two years of sorrow and vain regrets which never need have been. One word from her father or from the postman, the feel of crisp paper in her father's bunda when it was put away two years ago, and the whole course of her life would have been changed.
The village street behind her was silent now, even the footsteps of belated folk hurrying to their homes sent up no echo from the soft, sandy ground. And before her the fast-gathering night was slowly wrapping the plain in its peace-giving shroud. Inside the cottage all was still: mother and father lay either asleep or awake thinking of the morrow.
A great, heavy sob shook the young girl's vigorous young frame. It seemed too wantonly cruel, this decree of Fate which had withheld from her the light of her life. How easy it would have been to wait! How swiftly these two years would have flown past. Her heart would have kept young—waiting for Andor and for happiness, whereas now it was numb and unsentient, save for a feeling of obedience and of filial duty, of pity for her mother and father, and of resignation to her future state.