"Little Desire"—the name lay like a caress—"if you read this it will be because I am not here to tell you. And, there is no one else. My great dread is the dread of leaving you. If I could only look into the future for one moment, and see you in it, safe and happy, nothing else would matter. But I am afraid. I have always been too much afraid. You are not like me. I try to remember that. You are like your grandfather. He was a brave man. His eyes were grey like yours. He died before you were born and he never knew that Harry was not really my husband. I did not know it either, then. You see, he had a wife in England. I suppose he thought it did not matter. But when he died, it did matter. There was no one then on whom either you or I had any claim. I should have been brave enough to go on by myself. But I was never brave.
"It was then that Dr. Farr, who had been kind through Harry's illness, asked me to marry him. He was a middle-aged man. He said he would take care of w both. You were just three months old.
"I know now that I made a terrible mistake. He is not kind. He is not good. I am terrified of him. But the fear which makes me brave against other fears is the thought of leaving you. I try to remember my father. If I had been like him I could have worked for you and we might have been happy. Perhaps my mother was timid. I don't remember her.
"I don't know what to put in this letter, or how to make you understand. I loved your father. He was not a bad man. I am sure he never harmed anyone. He would have taken care of me all his life. But he didn't live. It was Dr. Farr who found out about the English wife. He pointed out that you would have no name and offered to give you his.
"I did you a great wrong. His name—better far to have no name than his! I am sure it is a wicked name. So I want you to know that it is not yours. You have no name by law, but I think, now, that there are worse things. Your father's name was Harry Strangeways. His people are English, a good family but very strict. I could not let them know about us. They would never have forgiven Harry. It would have been like slandering the dead. Do not blame him, little Desire, for I am sure he meant to do right. He was always light-hearted. And kind—always kind. Your laugh is just like his. Think of us both, if you can, with kindness—your unhappy Mother."
Long before Desire came to the end of the crumpled sheets her tears were falling hot and thick upon them. Tears which she had not been able to shed for her own broken hope came easily now for this long vanished sorrow. Her mother! How pitifully bare lay the shortened story of that smothered life. Desire's heart, so much stronger than the heart of her who gave it birth, filled with a great tenderness. She saw herself once more a little frightened child. She felt again that sense of Presence in the room. And knew that, for a child's sake, a gentle soul had not made haste to happiness.
For that gay scamp, her father, Desire had no tear. And no condemnation. Her mother had loved him. Her gentleness had seen no flaw. Lightly he had taken a woman to protect through life—to neglect, as lightly, the little matter of living. Desire let his picture slip unhindered from her mind.
There was relief, though, in the knowledge that she owed no duty there—or here. The instinct which had always balked at kinship with the strange old man who had held her youth in bondage had not been the abnormal thing she once had feared it was. She had fought through—but it was good to know that she had fought with Nature, not against her. At least she could start upon her new life clean and free....
A pity, though, that life should lie like ashes on her lips!