"I've come," she said, with a faint smile.
"Valerie! My God!"
She stood, half smiling, half fearful, her dark eyes meeting his, two friendly little hands outstretched. Then, as his own caught them, almost crushed them:
"Oh, it was your letter that ended all for me, Louis! It settled every doubt I had. I knew then—you darling!"
She bent and touched his hands with her lips, then lifted her sweet, untroubled gaze to his:
"I had been away from you so long, so long. And the time was approaching for me to decide, and I didn't know what was best for us, any more than when I went away. And then!—your letter came!"
She shook her head, slowly:
"I don't know what I might have decided if you never had written that letter to me; probably I would have come back to you anyway. I think so; I can't think of my doing anything else: though I might have decided—against myself. But as soon as I read your letter I knew, Louis…. And I am here."
He said with drawn lips quivering:
"Did you read in that letter one single word of cowardly appeal?—one infamous word of self? If you did, I wrote in vain."