The main fault of the novel was unquestionably that most accented by the reader, and, recognizing the story as the problem of your life, I understood why you supplied no solution to the riddle. You begged the question you propounded; the fact that your heroine married the hero being no answer, since only by the results of that marriage would it be possible to say if she had chosen the better part. It was this that convinced me you were putting on paper your own thoughts and mood. You were debating this theme, and could carry it in imagination to the point of marriage; but what lay beyond that was unknowable, and you made no attempt to invent a conclusion, the matter being too real to you to be merely a subject for artistic idealism and invention. Hitherto I had classed Mr. Whitely with your other lovers, feeling sure that you could not love him any more than you could any of them; but now for the first time I began to fear his success.
After reading the story three times I carried it back to the manuscript clerk; and when I had allowed sufficient time for it to be returned, I wrote you a long letter, telling how I had come to read the story, and making a careful criticism and analysis of both its defects and its merits. I cannot tell you what a labor of love that letter was, or how much greater pains I took over your book than I have ever taken over any writing of my own. What was perhaps unfair, after pointing out the inconclusiveness of your ending, I sketched what I claimed was the logical end to the story. Thinking as I did that I knew the original in your mind, I was more influenced by my knowledge of him than I was by the character in your book, and therefore possibly my inference was unjust. But in hopes of saving you from Mr. Whitely, I pictured a sequel in which your heroine found only greater loneliness in her loveless union, her husband’s love proving a tax, and not a boon; and marriage, instead of broadening her life, only bent and narrowed it by just so much as a strong-willed and selfish man would inevitably cramp the life of one over whom law and public opinion gave him control.
I was richly rewarded by your letter of thanks. You were so winning in your sweet acceptance of all my criticisms, and so lovable in your simple gratitude, that I would have done a thousand times the work to earn such a letter. Yet even in this guerdon I could not escape the sting of my unhappy lot; for, unable to reconcile my distant conduct with the apparent trouble I had taken, you asked me to dinner, leaving me to select the day, and spoke of the pleasure it would give you to have an opportunity to talk over the book with me.
I can think of few greater delights than to have gone over your story, line by line and incident by incident. My love pleaded with me to take the chance, pointing out that it would do you no harm, but on the contrary aid you, and I found a dozen specious reasons; but tempt me as they might, I always came back to the truth that if you knew who I really was you would not invite me, nor accept a favor at my hands. In the end I wrote you that my time was so mortgaged that I must deny myself the pleasure. A small compensation was my offer that if you chose to rewrite the story and send me the manuscript, I would gladly read it over again and make any further suggestions which occurred to me. You thanked me by letter gracefully, but I was conscious of your bewilderment in the very care with which you phrased your note; and when next we met I could see that I had become more an enigma than ever,—for which there is indeed small wonder.
God keep you, my darling.
XVIII
March 9. What seemed my misfortune proved quite the reverse. You evidently mentioned to Agnes my refusing to dine with you, and the next time I saw her she took me to task for it.
“It’s too bad of you,” she told me, “when I have explained to you how sensitive Maizie is, and how she has the idea that nice men do not like her, that you should go and confirm her in the feeling by treating her so! Why don’t you like her?”
“I do,” was all I said.