"PIERRE--I do not know whether you will even read these few words, whether I am not writing them in vain, just as the tears that I have shed in thinking of you ever since that frightful day have been shed vainly. I do not know whether you will let me tell you once more how I love you, whether you will let me tell you that I never loved any one in the world except you, that I feel I shall never love any one else. But I must tell it to you with the hope that my plea may reach you, the humble plea of a heart that suffers less from its own pain than from the knowledge that it has caused you to suffer. When I received back the other letter I wrote,--the one that you would not open,--my heart bled at the thought that you must have been mad with pain, or you would not have been so harsh with me. And I felt nothing except that you were suffering. "No, my beloved, I cannot speak to you in any other way than I have done since the hour when I called you to me to ask you to go away, the hour when I took you in my arms. I have tried to conquer my feelings. It caused me too much pain not to disclose all that I felt. If you do not read these lines, you will not hate me for the loving words I have said to you, for you will not know of them. But if you read them--ah! if you read them you will remember the hours which passed so quickly on the seashore in the shade of the calm pines at the Cap d'Antibes, the hours spent upon the deck of the yacht, hours spent at Genoa before you were struck down by the terrible blow, hours when I could still see you happy, when I could still make you happy! You do not know, sweetheart, you cannot know, what it is for a woman to make the man she loves happy! If I did not tell you at once what you know to-day, it was because of the certainty that never again should I see in your eyes the clear light of complete happiness which shone from your enraptured soul--a light that I have seen so much and loved so much.