"Edmund," she wrote, "do not again kiss me as you did last night. I feel wicked creeping out to meet you as it is, and last night—Edmund, you made me feel ashamed. It was not like kissing, it was as though you wished to eat me. Do not think me unkind, but I am feeling afraid, even of you. That is unkind—forgive me.
"Candide."
Another week, and the key had shifted again.
". . . it is true. I love you so that you can kiss me even like you did that time. It terrifies me and I feel cold and weak, but it is enough that you say it is the most splendid thing you have ever known. Edmund, will you be angry if I say that I regret the days before we knew we loved? Everything was in a golden mist like you see in the valley at sunrise, and now I keep on feeling I do not understand you. Why do you say you cannot tell your father you love me? I am well-born, though it is true I have no dot, but, indeed, I am a good manager, and you say I am even prettier than the English ladies. Oh! I am lonely and frightened, and I want your arms round me. Now that I have said that, you cannot reproach me with being cold. . . ."
"Your note has just come" (ran the next letter), "and I am oh! so miserable for you. You are not to think I am unhappy—I am happy to have loved you. If thinking about me adds to your unhappiness, I can even say—do not think about me. I can understand you cannot marry unless your fiancée has a dot, because of your estate. It is best that you should go, but you may see me to say good-bye. My dear one, my poor heart, what can I do to help you?"
That was all of the letters to Milord—the letters he had given back. Next came letters that were never sent.
"Chéri" (ran the first of them), "at last I can write out all that is in my heart, since you will never see these pages. I must write, or I shall go mad. . . . I don't regret, in spite of my shame and bewilderment, for I gave to you. I cannot even feel wicked, but I should not care if I did. I love you all the more now I know you are not what I thought. You are not a god or even a hero, you are a man, and so you are a child—my child, whose head I held on my breast. You have told me to write to you if I need your help. How can that be? All that is left to me is to live out my life here in dreams. I imagine your presence all day. If the door opens behind me and some one enters, I pretend it is you till the last moment possible—until Papa or one of the servants comes round my chair and speaks to me. I have been loved, and I love—that is a great deal to live on."
That night she went on with the same letter.
"Edmund, Edmund, it is not enough—I want you. My heart is breaking. I can only lie with my eyes shut and my face pressed down, and something beats out. 'I want you, I want you.' My heart broke when you wrote me your last note and I had to reply cheerfully because of you. I am not so cowardly but that I can still be glad you do not know my heart broke. Edmund, I want you, I want you."
The last of the unsent letters to Milord was written several months later.
"Why did I say hearts broke? They don't break, they go dead. Edmund, I wonder if, wherever you are, you are thinking of me? You are certainly not thinking that soon you will see me. I have been trying to decide what to do for the best, and now Papa says I shall not stay here till what he calls my shame is born. I will not stay where my hope and my joy is called my shame, and though I would never ask you anything for myself, I must ask if for the child. I am coming to England, and I must start now or I shall not arrive in time. I shall leave all my letters behind with my journal. I do not even know what I feel when I think of seeing you again.
"Candide de Clerissac."
There was still one paper more, an envelope that had come by courier and was addressed to Marie Bernardy. It had been opened, but inside was an enclosure of which the seals were still unbroken. Without any shock of surprise Bernardy saw it was addressed to him.