"DEAR CLARE—I destroyed your letter, and I can't quite remember whether it forbade me to reply or not. Anyhow, that's only my excuse for it. I'm having a dreadfully dull time at Seacliffe—we're the only visitors at the hotel and, so far as I can see, the only visitors in Seacliffe at all. I'm not exactly enjoying it, but I daresay it's doing me good. Thanks ever so much for your advice—I mean to profit by it—most of it, at any rate. But mayn't I write to you—even if you don't write to me? I do want to, especially now. May I!—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
No answer to that. For nearly a week he scanned the rack in the entrance-hall, hoping to see his own name typewritten on an envelope, for he guessed that even if she did reply she would take that precaution. But in vain his hurried and anxious returns from the cliff-walks; no letter was there. And at last, tortured to despair, he wrote again.
"DEAR CLARE—You haven't answered my letter. I did think you would, and now I'm a prey to all sorts of awful and, no doubt, quite ridiculous fears. And I'm going to ask you again, half-believing that you didn't receive my last letter—may I write to you? May I write to you whenever I want? I can't have your company, I know—surely you haven't the heart to deny me the friendship I can get by writing to you? You needn't answer: I promise I will never ask for an answer. I don't care if the letters I write offend you or not; there is only one case in which I should like you to be good enough to reply to me and tell me not to write again. And that is if you were beginning to forget me—if letters from me were beginning to be a bore to you. Please, therefore, let me write.—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."
To that there came a reply by return of post:
"MY DEAR KENNETH SPEED,—I think correspondence between us is both unwise and unnecessary, but I don't see how I can prevent you from writing if you wish to. And you need not fear that I shall forget you.—CLARE."
He replied, immediately, and with his soul tingling with the renewal of happiness:
"DEAR CLARE,—Thank God you can't stop me from writing, and thank God you know you can't. I don't feel unhappy now that I can write to you, now that I know you will read what I write. I feel so unreticent where you are concerned—I want you to understand, and I don't really care, when you have understood, whether you condemn or not. This is going (perhaps) to be a longish letter; I'm alone in the lounge of this entirely God-forsaken hotel—Helen is putting on a frock for dinner, and I've got a quarter-of-an-hour for you.
"This is what I've found out since I've come to Seacliffe. I've found out the true position of you and me. You've sunk far deeper into my soul than I have ever guessed, and I don't honestly know how on earth I'm to get rid of you! For the last ten days I've been fighting hard to drive you away, but I'm afraid I've been defeated. You're there still, securely entrenched as ever, and you simply won't budge. The only times I don't think of you are the times when I'm too utterly tired out to think of anything or anybody. Worse still, the stronger I get the more I want you. Why can't I stop it? You yourself said during our memorable interview after the 'rag' that it wasn't a bit of good trying to stop loving somebody. So you know, as well as me—am I to conclude that, you Hound of Heaven?
"But you can't get rid of me, I hope, any more than I can of you. You may go to the uttermost ends of the earth, but it won't matter. I shall still have you, I shall always bore you—in fact, I've got you now, haven't I? Don't we belong to each other in spite of ourselves?
"I tell you, I've tried to drive you out of my mind. And I really think I might succeed better if I didn't try. Therefore, I shan't try any more. How can you deliberately try to forget anybody? The mere deliberation of the effort rivets them more and more eternally on your memory!
"Helen and I are getting on moderately well. We don't quarrel. We exchange remarks about the weather, and we discuss trashy novels which we both have read, and we take long and uninteresting walks along the cliffs and admire the same views, over and over again. Helen thinks the rest must be doing me a lot of good. Oh my dear, dear Clare, am I wicked because I sit down here and write to you these pleading, treacherous letters, while my wife dresses herself upstairs without a thought that I am so engaged? Am I really full of sin? I know if I put my case before ninety-nine out of a hundred men and women what answer I should receive. But are you the hundredth? I don't care if you are or not; if this is wickedness, I clasp it as dearly as if it were not. I just can't help it. I lie awake at nights trying to think nice, husbandly things about Helen, and just when I think I've got really interested in her I find it's you I've really been thinking about and not Helen at all.
"There must be some wonderful and curious bond between us, some sort of invisible elastic. It wouldn't ever break, no matter how far apart we went, but when it's stretched it hurts, hurts us both, I hope, equally. Is it really courage to go on hurting ourselves like this? What is the good of it? Supposing—I only say supposing—supposing we let go, let the elastic slacken, followed our heart's desire, what then? Who would suffer? Helen, I suppose. Poor Helen!—I mustn't let her suffer like that, must I?
"It wasn't real love that I ever had for her; it was just mere physical infatuation. And now that's gone, all that's left is just dreadful pity—oh, pity that will not let me go! And yet what good is pity—the sort of pity that I have for her?
"Ever since I first knew you, you have been creeping into my heart ever so slowly and steadily, and I, because I never guessed what was happening, have yielded myself to you utterly. In fact, I am a man possessed by a devil—a good little devil—yet—"
He looked round and saw Helen standing by the side of him. He had not heard her approach. She might have been there some while, he reflected. Had she been looking over his shoulder? Did she know to whom was the letter he was writing?
He started, and instinctively covered as much of the writing as he could with the sleeve of his jacket.
"I didn't know you still wrote to Clare," she said, quietly.