I am going to get some picture postcards with small space for writing; this MS. paper demoralises me.
Sincerely,
Margaret Capel.
No. 15.
Will you ever know what your dear wonderful letter has given me? I passed through moments of doubt, of bewildered unbelief into a golden trance of joy and hope. And as again and again I read it some of your far braver personality fills me, and I refuse to think this new spring of hope is a mere dream, and take courage and tell myself I am something to you—something in your life, and that to me, Gabriel Stanton, has come at last the chance of helping, tending, caring for against all the world if need be, such a woman as Margaret Capel.
Let me revel in this new strange happiness. You are too kind, too generous to destroy it! For it is all strange and marvellous to me—I’ve lived so much alone—have missed so much by circumstance and the fault of what you call my “aggressive humility.” I can help you! As I write I feel I want nothing else in life. Oh! my wonderful friend, don’t let us miss a relationship which on my part I swear to you shall be consecrated to your service, to your happiness in any and every way you decide or will ask. Let me come into your life, give me the chance of healing those wounds which have bruised you grievously, but can never conquer your brave spirit. You must let me help.
You have gone away, but your dear letter is with me—it is so much your letter—so much you that I am not even lonely any more. And yet I long to see you—hear you talk, be near you. Thoughts—hopes—ideas, crowd upon me tonight, things to tell you——It is like having a new sense—I’ve wakened up in a new and so beautiful country. Do you wish for those weeks of solitude? Only what you wish matters. But I confess I’ve looked up the trains to Pineland. I will come on any day at any moment you say. There is no duty that could keep me should you say “come.” Give me at least one chance of seeing you in your new home. Then I will keep away and respect your solitude if you wish it.
The joy of your letter and the golden castles I am building help the hours until I hear from you.
G. S.
It is my opinion still that she only ran away in order to bring him after her, to secure a greater solitude than they could enjoy in places of public resort, or in her father’s house. I don’t mean that she deliberately planned what followed, but had that been her intention she could have devised no better strategy than to leave him at the point at which they had arrived without a word of farewell other than that letter. As for me, when I had finished reading it and the answer, I had recourse to the diary and MS. notes. They would, however, have been of but little use had not a second dose of codein that night brought me again in closer relation with the writer.