So she dismissed her chair-boy and strolled out under the pier. And, as nobody was there to interrupt her she sat down in the sand and opened her letter with fingers that seemed absurdly helpless and unsteady.
"On the train near Jupiter Light," it was headed; and presently continued:
"I am trying to be unselfishly honest with you to see how it feels. First—about my loving anybody. I never have; I have on several occasions been prepared to bestow heart and hand—been capable of doing it—and something happened every time. On one of these receptive occasions the thing that happened put me permanently out of business. I'll tell you about that later.
"What I want to say is that the reason I don't love you is not because I can't, but because I won't! You don't understand that. Let me try to explain. I've always had the capacity for really loving some woman. I was more or less lonely and shy as a child and had few playmates—very few girls of my age. I adored those I knew—but—well, I was not considered to be a very desirable playmate by those parents who knew the Malcourt history.
"One family was nice to me—some of them. I usually cared a great deal for anybody who was nice to me.
"The point of all this biography is that I'm usually somewhat absurdly touched by the friendship of an attractive woman of my own sort—or, rather, of the sort I might have been. That is my attitude toward you; you are amiable to me; I like you.
"Now, why am I not in love with you? I've told you that it's because I will not let myself be in love with you. Why?
"Dear—it's just because you have been nice to me. Do you understand? No, you don't. Then—to go back to what I spoke of—I am not free to marry. I am married. Now you know. And there's no way out of it that I can see.
"If I were in love with you I'd simply take you. I am only your friend—and I can't do you that injury. Curious, isn't it, how such a blackguard as I am can be so fastidious!
"But that's the truth. And that, too, may explain a number of other matters.