I am writing this because I must—though conventionally the shortness of our acquaintance does not justify me. But I have been conventional so long—circumstance has ruled and limited my doings. And tonight it comes to me that chance and fate are, or should be, greater than environment. The Gods only rarely offer gifts, and the blackness and blankness of despair follow their refusal. So I cling to the hope that they have now offered me a precious gift, and that in spite of all your pain—all the past which now so embitters you, to me may come the chance in some small way of proving to you that in friendship there is healing, and in sympathy and understanding, at least the hope of forgetfulness.
I shall hardly dare to read over what I have written, for I should either be conscious that it is inadequate to express what I have wanted to say to you—or that I have presumed too much in writing what is in my mind.
Look upon those Musicians as playing a prelude, not to a dream but to a happier future, and then my pleasure in the little gift will be enormously increased.
It has been a sort of joke in my family that I am over-cautious and too deliberate, but for tonight at least in these still quiet hours I mean to conquer this, and go out to post this letter myself; just as I have written it, with no alteration; yet with confidence in the kindness you have already shown me.
And I shall see you at dinner on Thursday.
Yours very sincerely,
Gabriel Stanton.
A little over a fortnight passed before there was any further correspondence. Meanwhile the two must have met frequently. Her letters were often undated, and her figures even more difficult to read than her handwriting generally. The hieroglyphic over the following looks like 5, but I could not be sure. The intimacy between them must have grown apace, and yet the running away could have been nothing but a ruse. There could have been little fear of so sedate a lover as Gabriel Stanton. I found something artificial in the next letter of hers, recapitulative, as if already she had publication in her mind. Of course it is more difficult for a novelist or a playwright to be genuine and simple with a pen than it is for a person of a different avocation, but I could not help thinking how much better than Margaret Ella would have acted her part, and my sympathy began to flow more definitely toward the inexperienced gentleman, no longer young, to whom she was introducing the game of flirtation under the old name of Platonic friendship.
No. 14.
Carbies,