Remembering her letter to Dick two months ago down at Northeast—and when had Lewis forgotten it for a single hour!—he trusted Petra’s ability to face things squarely, once they were given her to face. She had a clear, honest mind. She had been clear and honest with Dick. Lewis would now, to-night, by moonlight, on the edge of the Paradise meadow, be equally clear and honest with her.
The car reached sixty-nine on the clear-ahead highway, and the lines of Petra’s brave letter streaked through Lewis’ mind with almost a like speed. He knew it by heart from the one reading—that brave, dear letter to another man:
Dear Dick:
I am deeply sorry about the way I treated you last night. I have gotten up before dawn, Dick, to tell you how miserably sorry I am. Or I suppose it is really dawn, for all the east is red and purple. I am writing on Father’s desk in the library. Everybody is asleep. But I haven’t slept. I have been sitting up in bed all night, thinking of my cruelty to you. You see, this is the way it was, Dick. When you kissed me like that, it was really just as if somebody passing me in the street had kissed me. I mean it was as unexpected as that. My only feeling was terror. That is why I struck out like that—just as you would in the dark, if something strange were striking at you. You’d strike back. Besides, no one has ever kissed me before. Not like that, I mean. No one has ever been in love with me before. And you see, anyway, I have thought right along—never thought anything else—that you came to Green Doors on Clare’s account. It was Clare you always talked to. I didn’t know you even looked at me. This may seem strange to you, Dick. Now I see that thinking that was pretty stupid. You have been shy with me—just as one is toward somebody one really loves. Clare has explained it. She came out on the terrace right after you went. I was crying. She found out what was the matter. And she showed me how cruel and stupid I had been. I know now that it was a great honor you did me in asking me to marry you, Dick. To love somebody like that and tell them so and have them do what I did—strike out at you like a serpent—must have been too terrible. The blow on your face was nothing to the blow on your heart, I know. But now I am cool and all night I have been thinking. It isn’t just because Clare says so but now I feel myself how I owe you a deep apology. And I am going to tell you why, even if I hadn’t hated your kissing me the way you did, I would still have said the same thing, that I couldn’t feel toward you as you do toward me. You asked me, you know, if there was anybody else. If I was engaged. I told you no. Well, that was true. Of course I am not engaged. But now I am going to tell you something to prove how sorry I am I treated you as I did last night and to show you how I trust you—and how fond I am of you really, now that I see things about you and Clare in a truer light than I have been seeing them. It is this, Dick. I am not engaged, and I am not likely to be. But I love some one terribly. I love him the way you love me, I guess. But he doesn’t love me any more than I love you. So that makes things even between us, Dick, doesn’t it? Don’t tell Clare this, of course. Or any one. I have told you to even things up, and to make you see that if I have hurt your pride terribly, and been cruel to you, the same thing has been done to me. All I said to Clare last night was that I should write to you and apologize and beg you to go on being friends and not stop coming to Green Doors. Clare and Father will miss you, Dick, if you stay away, and believe it or not, I think I shall too. I don’t know how I ever behaved so brutally as I did last night, but I am always making mistakes and doing terrible things. Please burn this letter.
Affectionately—truly—Petra.
When Lewis looked up from that letter, Dick had said quickly, “It isn’t McCloud, Lewis! Don’t think it for a minute. Anybody can see how he feels about Petra. She could have him if she wanted him. It’s written all over him. It’s you she means, Lewis. You. Nobody else.”
Lewis had said, “Damn you, Dick!” and then no more. He had held Dick to their bargain from that minute, not to discuss Petra or anybody at Green Doors ever again. He had seen to it that Dick did burn the letter as Petra had asked. And as it charred and went up in a hot blaze between the logs, Lewis had not reached his hand to rescue it. He had clenched his hands instead, while his heart burned to a white heat and then withered into charred nothingness with the letter. In that minute Lewis had hated Dick almost as much as Clare. What had they tried to do, between them, to this poor baffled child! Of course it was Neil she meant. Poor Petra! And of course Neil did want her every bit as much as she wanted him. But there was the man’s living faith—the faith neither Clare nor Dick could comprehend as a reality—which stood between him and Petra, forbidding them to each other.
Only now, after weeks of thinking and watching, had Lewis come to think that it would be best for both Neil and Petra if Petra could bring herself to accept half a loaf from life, and marry himself, if she could care for him even a little. For she was created and designed for giving—for motherhood, wifehood. And Lewis loved her with such utter abandonment! Mightn’t the strength and truth of his love ultimately force a response almost in kind?
Lewis had little hope that this was even a possibility. But he had said his prayer—Neil’s prayer, rather—the only one Lewis had ever learned to pray. He was saying it now, as he drew more slowly into Meadowbrook’s environs. His nephews were expecting a romp with Lewis to-night before their supper. Then he would be changing into evening clothes at the Allens’, for Petra’s dinner, and would return there to sleep.
“Yes,” he assured himself, driving slowly and more slowly, “I shall lose her forever to-night—or gain the chance of beginning to win her.” He had decided to tell her that he had read her letter to Dick down at Northeast and how innocent Dick had been in letting him.
“Dick, you see,” Lewis would say to Petra, “simply thought he was fixing things up between you and me without making us wait for the last chapter! He thought in all honesty it was I, not Neil, you meant in that letter. Of course, I knew better.... But Petra, it isn’t broken hearts that make for ruin and unhappiness in lives. Not ultimately, anyway. It is broken faiths. Neil stayed away to-night—don’t you suppose—because of something dearer to him than mere happiness. Something more blessed than happiness.” That was part of what Lewis would say to her. And then, if they kissed—if she let him kiss her there to-night on the edge of the Paradise meadow—
Well! Lewis’ hope, though small, pierced his heart like a sword.