"Please don't tell me any more," said Julian, quickly, shading his eyes with his hand. "I should be awfully obliged if you'd go. I think you've said enough."
Eurydice also thought that she had said enough; so she returned with the satisfaction of one who has accomplished a mission, on the rest of Stella's pound.
CHAPTER XXVI
This is going to be my last love-letter to you, Stella. I wonder if you will know it is a love-letter. It won't sound particularly like one. It's to tell you that I can't go through with our marriage. I can't give you my reasons, and I can't face you without giving them to you. You must try to take my word for it that I am doing what I think best for both of us.
You see, I trust you to do what I want, though I know I am acting in a way that you'll despise. If you will think of what it means for me to act in such a way, you'll realize that I am pretty certain that I am right.
You are the best friend I ever had, man or woman, and I know you value my friendship, so that it seems uncommonly mean to take it away from you; and yet I'm afraid I can't be satisfied with your friendship.
It would honestly make me happier to hear that you were married; but I couldn't meet you afterward, and if you don't marry, I couldn't let you alone.
You see, I tried that plan when I didn't know you'd let me do anything else, and it can't be said to have worked very well, can it? It would be quite impossible now. There are two things I'd like you to remember. One is, if you set out, as I think you did, to heal a broken man, you've succeeded, and nothing can take away from your success. You put in a new mainspring. I am going to work now. Some day I'll finish the book, but not yet. The second thing is something I want you to do for me. I know I have no right to ask you! I'm only appealing to your mercy. Will you let my mother help you a little? I know you won't let me, but you would have let me, Stella. Think what that means to me—to know that you would have taken my help, and that by freeing you I am also, in a sense, deserting you. If you still want to make a man happier who has only been a nuisance to you, you can't say I haven't shown you the way.
I should like to give you Ostrog, but I suppose he'd be out of place in a town hall.
I'm not going to ask you to forgive me; for I'm not really sorry for anything except that there wasn't more of it and I'm never going to forget anything.
Good-by.
Your lover,
Julian.
Stella was in the middle of ironing the curtains when she received Julian's letter. Everything else was ready for his visit except the curtains.
Mrs. Waring was dressed. It had taken several hours, a needle and cotton, and all the pins in the house, and now she was sitting in a drawing-room which was tidier than any she had sat in since her early married life. She thought that it looked a little bare.
Professor Waring was in the Museum. He had become so restless after breakfast that it had seemed best to despatch him there, and retrieve him after Julian arrived.
Eurydice had not asked Mr. Travers for a morning off; she had merely conceded that she would allow Stella to arrange a subsequent meeting with Julian on Sunday, if it was really necessary.
Eurydice kissed Stella tenderly before she left the house to go to the town hall. She knew that she had saved her sister, but she foresaw for the victim of salvation a few painful moments. Even a kindly Providence may have its twinges of remorse.