"What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie, that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking God that we were parted--that you were on your way home--safe--out of my reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't explain it. I only know that one moment I hated Delafield as a mortal enemy--whether he was conscious of what he had done or no--and the next I found myself blessing him!
"I understand now what people mean when they talk of conversion. It seems to me that in the hours I have just passed through things have come to light in me that I myself never suspected. I came of an Evangelical stock--I was brought up in a religious household. I suppose that one can't, after all, get away from the blood and the life that one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with very stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this night, and shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his old face, as he put before me the thoughts I had dared to entertain, the risks I had been ready to take towards the woman I loved--the woman to whom I owed a deep debt of eternal gratitude.
"Julie, it is strange how this appointment affects me. Last night I saw several people at the Embassy--good fellows--who seemed anxious to do all they could for me. Such men never took so much notice of me before. It is plain to me that this task will make or mar me. I may fail. I may die. But if I succeed England will owe me something, and these men at the top of the tree--
"Good God! how can I go on writing this to you? It's because I came back to the hotel and tossed about half the night brooding over the difference between what these men--these honorable, distinguished fellows--were prepared to think of me, and the blackguard I knew myself to be. What, take everything from a woman's hand, and then turn and try and drag her in the mire--propose to her what one would shoot a man for proposing to one's sister! Thief and cur.
"Julie--kind, beloved Julie--forget it all! For God's sake, let's cast it all behind us! As long as I live, your name, your memory will live in my heart. We shall not meet, probably, for many years. You'll marry and be happy yet. Just now I know you're suffering. I seem to see you in the train--on the steamer--your pale face that has lighted up life for me--your dear, slender hands that folded so easily into one of mine. You are in pain, my darling. Your nature is wrenched from its natural supports. And you gave me all your fine, clear mind, and all your heart. I ought to be damned to the deepest hell!
"Then, again, I say to myself, if only she were here! If only I had her here, with her arms round my neck, surely I might have found the courage and the mere manliness to extricate both herself and me from these entanglements. Aileen might have released and forgiven one.
"No, no! It's all over! I'll go and do my task. You set it me. You sha'n't be ashamed of me there.
"Good-bye, Julie, my love--good-bye--forever!" #/
These were portions of that strange document composed through the intervals of a long night, which showed in Warkworth's mind the survival of a moral code, inherited from generations of scrupulous and God-fearing ancestors, overlaid by selfish living, and now revived under the stress, the purification partly of deepening passion, partly of a high responsibility. The letter was incoherent, illogical; it showed now the meaner, now the nobler elements of character; but it was human; it came from the warm depths of life, and it had exerted in the end a composing and appeasing force upon the woman to whom it was addressed. He had loved her--if only at the moment of parting--he had loved her! At the last there had been feeling, sincerity, anguish, and to these all things may be forgiven.
And, indeed, what in her eyes there was to forgive, Julie had long forgiven. Was it his fault if, when they met first, he was already pledged--for social and practical reasons which her mind perfectly recognized and understood--to Aileen Moffatt? Was it his fault if the relations between herself and him had ripened into a friendship which in its turn could only maintain itself by passing into love? No! It was she, whose hidden, insistent passion--nourished, indeed, upon a tragic ignorance--had transformed what originally he had a perfect right to offer and to feel.