At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

The next afternoon when Clytie returned from a drive she found the letter awaiting her. She took it up to her room, and there, sitting on the edge of the bed, read it with conflicting feelings. It ran as follows:

My Dear Clytie:

You know my secret. I think so. I saw it in your face. But if I was mistaken, let me tell it to you in so many words; and as I bring to you what is best and truest in me, it will neither dishonour me to tell it nor you to hear it. And as you in your goodness offer me a resumption of the old friendship, I must say it once and for all. I love you, Clytie, with all the strength of a man who has allowed women to take up very little part in his life. I loved you long before I knew it. It grew up gradually during our intercourse, and only one day when you were at Durdleham a little, little chance circumstance revealed to me that you were not only the grand, sweet friend, but the woman that I passionately loved. And I could not tell you for fear of paining you and destroying our friendship—for what was I to love you? And I dreaded lest you should think me disloyal to the trust between us. And at last I came, resolved to speak, and it was too late. Winifred can tell you.

From that time I have carried my love with me as the vivifying principle of my life. I thought you would never know, but now I have betrayed myself.

Will it not pain you too much in your present happiness to see me under this new guise? Ah, Clytie! tell me frankly as you always used to do.

I shall never, never willingly trouble the serenity of your life. I love you too sincerely, too devotedly; and my love makes me myself too happy. If you will meet me now and again after this, freely, at the houses of our common friends, you shall only see the old Kent who now and then scolded you, sometimes helped you, and who always held you dearer and higher and grander than all other women; and yet you must let yourself be loved—that I cannot help. It is fused into my being, and it gives me happiness in my own way. I am an oddity, you know, Clytie, as you yourself have called me, and oddities have their little privileges, and if you know that it makes my happiness, and does not grudge you yours, you will not find it hard to be loved.

If you were a woman of ordinary conventional ideas, I could not tell you this. You would misunderstand it.

There seems but little I could do for you—and I would do so much. But life is full of strange chances, and perhaps my chance of serving you may come, and would then I could die for you to save you an hour's pain.

Yours in all devotion,

Kent.