John Gregory loves you. I do not blame him for that, nor wonder. “We needs must love the highest when we see it.” He is a man of great power and of the highest spiritual ambition. He is far nearer to you in ability than I; he could enter more deeply into your purposes and sympathize in fuller measure with your intellectual life. I believe you could have loved him, if you had been free, and that the union of two such natures would have been nobly effective for good. But I found you first, and with my fond dream that a sign was given me, won you for my wife. What then?
It fell to my part, although not of my own will, to give your life the shape it has taken. Sometimes I see plainly that I, a poor, pale, colourless fellow, wholly beneath both you and John Gregory, have maimed both your lives, so much stronger and more potential than mine could ever be.
And yet, Anna, for all this I cannot wish the past undone. I claim you wholly, heartily, for my own, and whatever the future may hold for you, and however the past has tried you, I believe in your love for me, and in the union of our spirits. My heart is at rest. My trust in you is absolute and beyond hurt or harm, and all the joy my life has known has come through you, my true and faithful wife. Never doubt this if you love me and would honour my name.
I wish to lay no hint of limitation or direction upon your future. Wherever you go, the dear Lord will go with you, and you will bring peace and consolation. You cannot go astray, nor your work be brought to naught, for God is with you. All that I have is yours without reserve or condition, beyond the few legacies I have named in a letter to my lawyer in Fulham. Use what was ours together freely wherever you will, whether to establish Fraternia, or in any line of effort which appeals to you. My keenest regret is that heretofore I have withheld from you what you desired. Forgive me. Those scruples look small and mean to me to-day.
Good night, my Anna—my Benigna, my highest grace and blessing.
Do not think of me as left comfortless. I am not alone. The King is at the door, and I hear his voice. He has even come in and will sup with me and I with him.
Let his peace be upon us both.
Keith.
It was morning.