"I am troubled about Bettina. Certainly the child is not happy. All of her brightness has left her. She is pale and thin, and I am too wise a physician of bodies not to know something, too, of hearts. You may say that my attitude has affected her; that she had felt instinctively the difference in me. But it is not that. I am sure it is not that. When I asked her to-night if there was anything between us, she faltered that she had something to tell me that she would write. "Perhaps I should wait until her letter comes, but I cannot wait. You are so vividly with me at this moment, Diana, that I can almost hear your voice calling above the noise of the wind and waves. I can see you as I like you best--all in white. I can feel your presence as I felt it that night in the empty house as you stood on the threshold of that moonlighted room. "Oh, dear girl, come back to me. I must have you in my life. Otherwise it will be a thwarted life--and a lonely one. For whether you marry me or not, I will not marry Betty. I do not love her, and she shall not spend her days as the unloved wife of one whose thoughts are all with a wonder-woman up in the hills. "Can't you see it as I do? We must not so profane marriage, Betty and I. There is no idea of honor so false as that which holds a man or a woman to a promise which has ceased to have a vital and a vivid meaning. "No man has a right to plan for a home unless Love is to be the corner-stone. These things are sacred, and not to be spoken of except to those who understand. But my love for you and your love for me would form a barrier against all the sweet and tender meanings for Betty of wifehood and motherhood. "That's the plain truth of it. I'm a blunt man, and I've said it as it has come to me after days of pondering. "I am not saying these things that I may marry you. I am saying them because they are true. Surely we can find a way to make Bettina happy. Her youth and loveliness must always win love. The hearts of the boys at the club are all under her little feet, and Justin--oh, if I only dared hope that she could care for Justin---- "But marry her I will not, even if I go alone through life. "For me you are the One Woman, Diana. In these days of separation from you I have thought of many things, but of none more than this: that we men, having loved one woman, deceive ourselves, when we lose her, with the thought that another like her may be found--but she is never found, and so we go through life half-men, unsatisfied, with hungry hearts. "There's a big storm coming. I wish you might go down to the beach and walk with me in the wind. How often we have walked together in beating storms, Diana, and have gloried in them--so we would face the storms of life together; so I cannot face them with any other--or alone. "Oh, girl, come back to me. I need you. I must have you. I _will_ have you. You are mine.