I have always loved you. I want you to know it. There has never been an hour in all these years that I have not thought of you, that your dear face has not been before me. In France, here, everywhere,--always I am looking into your eyes, always I am hearing your voice, always I am feeling the gentle touch of your hand. Now you know. I could not have told you before. I am the blacksmith's son. God knows I am not ashamed of that. But I cannot forget, nor can you, that a blacksmith's son lies buried at the top of that grim old hill, and that he was not good enough for the daughter of a Windom. I hear that you have given your heart to some one else. You will marry him. But to the end of your days,--and I hope they may be many,--I want you to know that there is one man who will love you with all his heart and all his soul to the end of HIS days. I hope you will be happy. It is my greatest, my only wish. Once upon a time, we stole away, you and I, to write romances of love and adventure. Even then, you were my heroine. I was putting you into my poor story, but you were putting your dreams into yours, and I was not your dream hero. Then we would read to each, other what we had written. Do you remember how guardedly we read and how stealthy we were so as not to arouse suspicion or attract attention to our lair? I shall never forget those happy hours. Every line I wrote and read to you, Alix dear, was of you and FOR you. You were my heroine. My hero, feeble creature, told you how much I loved you, and you never suspected. I am telling you all this now, when my hope is dead, so that you may know that my love for you began when you were little more than a baby, and has endured to this day and will endure forever. I pray God you may always be happy. And now, in closing, I can only add the trite sentence,--which I recall reading in more than one novel and which I was imitative enough to put into my own unfinished masterpiece: If ever you are in trouble and despair and need me, I will come to you from the ends of the earth. I mean it, Alix. With all the best wishes in the world, I am and will remain Yours devotedly, DAVID. P.S.--I have just looked up from this letter to catch sight of myself in a mirror across the office. I have to smile. That beastly but honourable glass reveals the true secret of my failure to captivate you. How could any self-respecting heroine fall in love with a chap with a nose like mine, and a mouth that was intended for old Goliath himself, and cheek bones that were handed down by Tecumseh, and eyes that squint a little--but I daresay that's because they are somewhat blurred at this particular instant. I am reminded of the "Yank" who had his nose shot off at Chateau Thierry. He said that now that the Germans didn't have anything visible to train their artillery on, the war would soon be over. He had lost his nose but not his sense of the ridiculous. I have managed to retain both.