"We don't see you."
"You won't soon, unless—"
The end of a line struck the sand.
The night had almost passed; its last black hour, like a pall, lay over the sea, where, far from the Mount, a ship swayed and tossed. In the narrow confines of her master's cabin, the faint glimmering of a lamp revealed a man bending over a paper, yellow and worn; the lines so faint and delicate, they seemed almost to escape him!
"How strange, after all these years, the sight of your handwriting!—and now, to be writing you! Yet is it meet—to say farewell! For that which you have heard, mon ami, is true. I am going to die. You say, you heard I was not well; I answer what really you heard; the question, mon ami, beneath your words! ... And, dying, it is well with me. I have wronged no soul on earth—except you, my friend, and you forgive me.... I had hoped the years would efface that old memory. You say they have not.... It is wise you are going away."
The reader paused; listened to the sea; the moaning and sighing, like voices on the wings of the storm.
"You speak in your letter about 'trickery'—used to estrange us! Think no more of it, I beg you. What is past, is gone—as I, part of that past, when we were boy and girl together—soon shall be. And come not near the Mount. There can be no meeting for us on earth. I send you my adieu from afar.... It is only a shadow that speaks ... mon ami."