By Ruth Sterry
Fog enfolded the city in a drenching white veil.
It clung to the windows of the Palace Hotel and shut out the light from the bedroom in which a man sat earnestly penning a letter. It seemed to make an effort at entrance as though it would blot from the paper the words he wrote.
“Palace Hotel,
Wednesday morning.
“Dear Miss Arliss,
“It seems strange to call you that when I am about to ask you to be my wife. Yet what can I do when I have seen you only once?
“You surely remember, do you not, that one day when you and I met and were held prisoners by the train wreck in the San Joaquin Valley, you said I might call on you when I returned to San Francisco after my trip to the Orient? But you could not have dreamed what your permission meant to the lonely, business-bound coffee merchant who long ago, in the poisonous lands of South America, had shut his heart to women’s smiles, and had turned deaf ears to the music of their voices.
“Nor can I ever hope to make you understand what it meant during the long journeying that followed the wreck. The memory of you with your cheeriness, your undaunted smile in all the hardship of that wreck, has brought new life to me.
“For eight months I have dreamed of you day and night. During that time I have not once lost the picture of heated desert waste, the ugly wreckage of the train, the groaning, weeping people—and you, a girl with tender eyes, a smile of sympathy for the unluckiest devil, and ready resourcefulness to ease pain that would have done credit to an army nurse. I have dreamed of you in my home—awaiting my coming with your radiant smile.
“And so, unable to come to you in simple friendship, I thought it best to write first and explain. I wanted to come with your permission granted after you knew that I love you—I love you. I like to write the words, I want you for my wife.