I can never tell you half that is in my heart. You are an angel of goodness, and I am on my knees before you all the time. I will tell Anne as little as possible until you give me permission, yet I am sure she must guess the rest. My voice alters when I speak of you, although I try to keep it even and calm. I went to her when I got your letter. “A friend of mine wants to know you.” I began as absurdly as that. She looked at me in surprise, and I went on hurriedly, “She wants you to go down with me to her house in Pineland at the end of the week....”
“You have been there before?” she asked suspiciously, sharply. “Is that where you have been each week lately?”
“Yes,” I answered, priding myself that I did not go on to tell her each week I entered Paradise, lingered there a little while. She began to question, probe me. Were you old, young, beautiful; the questions poured forth. Somehow or other, in the end these questions froze and silenced me. I could not tell her, you were you! She would not have understood. Nor was I able to satisfy her completely on any point. I could not describe you, felt myself stammering like a schoolboy over the colour of your hair, your eyes. How could I say to her “This sweet lady who invites you to make her acquaintance is just perfection, no more nor less; all compound of fire and dew, made composite and credible with genius”? As for giving a description of you, it would need a poet and a painter working together, and in the end they would give up the task in despair. I did not tell Anne this.
She is now reviewing her wardrobe. And I ... I am reviewing nothing ... past definite thought. Do you know that when I left you on Sunday I feared that I had vexed or disappointed you again? You seemed to me a little cold—constrained. Monday and Tuesday I have examined and cross-examined myself—suffered. My whole life is yours—but if I fail to please you! I was in a hotel in the country once, when a man was brought in from the football field, very badly hurt. His eyes were shut, his face agonised; he moaned, for all his fortitude. There was a doctor in the crowd that accompanied him, who gave what seemed to me a strange order: “Put him in a hot bath, just as he is, don’t delay a moment; don’t wait to undress him.” My own bath was just prepared and I proffered it. They lowered him in. He was a fine big fellow, but suffering beyond self-restraint. Within a minute of the water reaching him, clothes on and everything, he left off moaning. His face grew calm. “My God! I am in heaven!” he exclaimed.
“The relief must have been exquisite. I thought of the incident when your letter came, when I had submerged myself in it. I had forgotten it for years, but remembered it then. I too had passed in one moment from exquisite agony to a most wonderful calm. Dear love, how can I thank you! I am not going to try. Anne and I will come by the train arriving at Pineland at 4.52. I will not ask your kindness for her; I see you diffusing it. She will be grateful, and the form her gratitude will take will be the endeavour to convert you to Christian Science. My sweet darling, you will listen gravely, patiently. And I shall know it will be for me. I have done nothing to deserve you, am nothing, only your worshipper. Some day perhaps you will let me do something for you. Dear heart, I love you, love you, love you, however I write.”
G. S.
Friday, Margaret decided it was better that she should entertain her guests alone. She had to learn the idiosyncrasies of this poor sister of her lover’s, to acclimatise herself to a new atmosphere between herself and Gabriel. She invited Peter Kennedy to dine with them on Saturday, but bade him not to speak lightly of Christian Science.
“What’s the game?” he asked her.
“I think it is probably some form of mesmerism; I don’t quite know. Anyway Mr. Stanton’s sister is an invalid and thinks Christian Science has relieved her. You are not to laugh at or argue with her.”
“I am to dine here and talk to her, I suppose, whilst you and that fellow ogle and make love to each other.” She turned a cold shoulder to him.