Do you love me, Roddy? Tell me again that you do; and don’t think me importunate.
I am so wrapped round and rich in my thoughts of you that at the moment I feel I can endure your absence. I almost welcome it because it will give me time to sit alone, and begin to realise my happiness. So that when you come back—Oh, Roddy, come back soon!
I have loved you ever since I first saw you when we were little, I suppose,—only you, always you. I’m not likely ever to stop loving you. Thank God I can tell you so at last. Will you go on loving me? Am I to go on loving you? Oh, but you won’t say no, after last night. If you don’t want to be tied quite yet, I shall understand. I can wait years quite happily, if you love me. Roddy, I am yours. Last night I gave you what has always belonged to you. But I can’t think about last night yet. It is too close and tremendous and shattering. I gasp and nearly faint when I try to recall it. I dissolve.
When I came back to my room in the dawn I stared and stared at my face in the glass, wondering how it was I could recognize it. How is it I look the same, and move, eat, speak, much as usual?
Ought I to have been more coy, more reluctant last night? Would it have been more fitting—would you have respected me more? Was I too bold? Oh, this is foolishness: I had no will but yours. But because I love you so much I am a little fearful. So write to me quickly and tell me what to think, feel, do. I shall dream till then.
There is so much more to tell you, and yet it is all the same really. My darling, I love you!
Judy.
She posted it. Next morning she hurriedly dressed and ran downstairs in the sudden expectation of finding a letter from him; but there was none.
Now he would have got hers.... Now he would have read it.... Now he would be walking to the station....
She heard the train steam out; and doubt and sorrow came like a cloud upon her; but only for a little while.