“Ah, give it to me.” He opened and read it hurriedly.
“I thought you meant dead at first,” he said. His brown eyes had lost the light that had been in them and were melancholy as before; he stood still by the table looking down upon his roses. They would fade, and she would never see them now. Never ... never ...
“Come and sit by the fire and let’s talk it over quietly,” said Hilaire. “Oh, damn women,” he mumbled as he drew at his pipe—the fifth that morning. It was the first time in a week that he had uttered his pet expletive. “What does she say?”
“You can read her letter.”
“Would she mind?”
“Oh, no,” Jean said bitterly. “She loves you—what she calls loving—next best after me. She told me so.”
Hilaire carefully smoothed the crumpled, blotted page out on his knee.
“My dearest Jean,—I am going away because I am a coward. I dare not live with you, and I dare not ask you to forgive me. Last night as I lay awake I thought and thought about my feeling for you and I was sure that it was love. I used to think of you often last summer and to wonder where you were and what you were doing, and I hoped you had not forgotten me. I did not love you then, but I suppose my thoughts of you kept my heart’s door open for you, and certainly they helped to keep out someone else who came and tried to get admittance. Oh, one must suffer to keep love perfect, but isn’t it worth while? You may not believe me now when I say that if I cared for you less I should stay, but it is true. Oh, Jean, even when we were so happy for a few minutes yesterday something in me looked beyond into the years to come and was afraid. Not of you; I trust you, dearest; but of the world. Men would stare at me and laugh and whisper together, and women would look away, and I know I should not be able to bear it. I am not brave like that. Oh, every word I write must hurt you, I know. Remember that I love you now and shall always. Good-bye.—Your
“Olive.”
“I should keep this.”