"Is there a soul at home in England who can say as much? And if not, are you justified, Katrine, in sacrificing me to your pride? You won't do it. You can't do it! Come to me, Katrine! "J.C.D. Blair." "Cumly, _November 20, 19--_. "Dear Captain Blair, "I have received your letter. What can I say? Honestly, I have tried to weigh your arguments,--not calmly,--that is impossible, but unselfishly, thoughtfully, from every point of view, and indeed, and indeed, I can't alter my decision! "I hate the thought of giving you pain; I hate it so much that I will confess that it gives me pain also. I want to give in, and say yes; I want to leave behind the pain and the jar of the last few years, and sail out into the sun,--to see Dorothea, and yes! to see _you_ too; to continue our friendship face to face. I could waive the shyness, waive the pride; what I cannot do is to waive the _risk_! You are a man; you see, man-like, only the plain, obvious facts; you don't realise, as a woman does, the hundred and one difficulties and risks. You say that you love me, and you _do_ love the imaginary Katrine whom you have created out of paper and ink. What you don't realise is how tiny a difference between the real and the imaginary might turn that love to disillusion. I'm honest in my letters; I don't pretend; Dorothea has no doubt told you my faults as well as my virtues; my photographs are not flattered; because I am young, and healthy, and alert, I am better-looking in real life, yet if I walked into your room at this moment looking my utmost best, you might still feel a shock of disappointment! You might acknowledge that this woman was handsomer, finer, in every way more personable than you had imagined, but that would not soothe the disappointment. She had made unto yourself a dream, and she was not your dream! "Such a little thing can do it,--a little inconsequent thing, a tiny personal peculiarity, a trick of manner, an expression, a _look_. It's not a question of whether it is beautiful and admirable in itself; it is a question of _attraction_, the indefinable, all-important attraction about which there can be no reasoning, no appeal. "We discussed it before--do you remember? I told you there was every conceivable reason why I _should_ have loved one man who wanted me, but there it was,--impossible! and nothing could alter it. "If we had met in the ordinary way, as strangers, we should have been able to test the presence or absence of this attraction in a simple, natural fashion,--now, the realisation of its failure on either side must bring with it misery and embarrassment.