"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me—to tell me that she meant to break our engagement: Mary Virginia!
"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."
He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.
"And you said—?"
"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me. She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was. Mary Virginia, Padre!
"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why should I? She's—she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words, because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life. Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent this.
"Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."
The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.
"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure. I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet—
There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had found. I handed the note back, in silence.