"Perhaps I should wait until her letter comes, but I cannot wait. You are so vividly with me at this moment, Diana, that I can almost hear your voice calling above the noise of the wind and waves. I can see you as I like you best—all in white. I can feel your presence as I felt it that night in the empty house as you stood on the threshold of that moonlighted room.
"Oh, dear girl, come back to me. I must have you in my life. Otherwise it will be a thwarted life—and a lonely one. For whether you marry me or not, I will not marry Betty. I do not love her, and she shall not spend her days as the unloved wife of one whose thoughts are all with a wonder-woman up in the hills.
"Can't you see it as I do? We must not so profane marriage, Betty and I. There is no idea of honor so false as that which holds a man or a woman to a promise which has ceased to have a vital and a vivid meaning.
"No man has a right to plan for a home unless Love is to be the corner-stone. These things are sacred, and not to be spoken of except to those who understand. But my love for you and your love for me would form a barrier against all the sweet and tender meanings for Betty of wifehood and motherhood.
"That's the plain truth of it. I'm a blunt man, and I've said it as it has come to me after days of pondering.
"I am not saying these things that I may marry you. I am saying them because they are true. Surely we can find a way to make Bettina happy. Her youth and loveliness must always win love. The hearts of the boys at the club are all under her little feet, and Justin—oh, if I only dared hope that she could care for Justin——
"But marry her I will not, even if I go alone through life.
"For me you are the One Woman, Diana. In these days of separation from you I have thought of many things, but of none more than this: that we men, having loved one woman, deceive ourselves, when we lose her, with the thought that another like her may be found—but she is never found, and so we go through life half-men, unsatisfied, with hungry hearts.
"There's a big storm coming. I wish you might go down to the beach and walk with me in the wind. How often we have walked together in beating storms, Diana, and have gloried in them—so we would face the storms of life together; so I cannot face them with any other—or alone.
"Oh, girl, come back to me. I need you. I must have you. I will have you. You are mine.