“It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and _needed_ you. And when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different, somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?--it had come! And I sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, _as you deserved!_ My prayers had been answered, somehow--or maybe it was what any woman would do just living near you and being with you. “And then I saw _I couldn't tell you, after all!_ “For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for five years _I hadn't loved you_, Dickie! “And how would _that_ make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a knife, Dickie? “Oh, I wanted you to know! _How_ I wanted you to know! But, you see, I couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just _had_ to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow or other. And I _will_ make you feel it, Dickie! “But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one smallest bit of your love... not now! It would _kill_ me! “But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you--it's my first love letter--the first real one, Dickie. If _you_ die first, I'll tell you in Heaven. And if _I_ die first, you'll understand! “Agnes.” XII.--Behind the Curtain |It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and independence as by what your precisians call thieving.