"MY BELOVED WIFE," Wolff had written. "It seems strange and foolish that I should sit down and write to you when you are in the next room and I could go in to you and tell you all that I have in my heart. It seems all the more foolish because this letter may never come into your hands. Somehow, though, I think that it will, and that, though I am a clumsy fellow with my pen, you will understand better than if I spoke to you now. Now there is a terrible sea between us which neither of us can cross. You are bitter and angry with me because I am a soldier and must do my duty even if it is against the one I love most on earth. I am sad because I have lost my wife. You see, my dearest, I know everything. I have known quite a long time, and pitied you with all my heart. I pitied because I understood. You were too young to know your own heart or to measure the sacrifices which you would have to bring, and it was my fault that I did not measure for you and make you understand. Well, after it was too late, you found out for yourself, and the old love came back into your life, and I lost you. I never asked you about that ’old love.’ I trusted you, and I believed that the day would come when you would tell me everything. Fate has ordained otherwise. I shall never understand anything, save that you _did_ love me, and that for a time we were wonderfully happy in our love. Now that it is all over, I can still thank you for that time. It was worth all that it has cost, and perhaps you too will not regret it—now that it is over. My beloved wife! I suppose it had to end thus: there was too much between us. I suppose—old _Streber_ that I am, with my cut-and-dried ways—that I could not fit into your life nor fill it as another might have done, and you could not understand that it was not want of love that made me fail. You could not understand that I could love you and yet ask you to sacrifice so much. If you had been a German woman you would have understood better. You would have seen that a soldier must belong to his duty, and that his wife must help him at whatever cost. But you were English, and there was no reason why you should have brought sacrifices to a country that was not your own. I can understand that: I always understood, but I could not help you.