"My dear Friend, I have thought it over, many times, in many different moods, and in all of them I have always wanted to do what you ask. Not for your sake, not because you ask me, but for my own. I think I should be very happy, and as you know I have never yet been very happy. I wasn't while my husband was alive. Imagine my finding side by side in his desk the doctor's letter saying it was certain death to go to Henstead and that report of Professor Maturin's which he suppressed and told me had been destroyed. That brought him back to me just as he was. With you I think I should be happy. I should never be afraid, I should never be ashamed. What fear and what shame I used to feel! I write very openly to you about myself and about him; if I were answering as you wish, I would not say a word against him. But I can't. That's just the feeling. You tell me I am free, that two years have gone by, that I might find a new life for myself, that you love me. I know it all, but except the last none of it sounds true. You know that once I thought about being free and that then you were in my thoughts. Who should be, if you were not? Except him and you I have never thought of any man. And I want to come to you now. He is too strong for me. Is it really two years ago? Surely not! I seem still to hear his speech, and still to see him fall into your arms. I should always hear him, and always see that. I'm afraid you won't understand me, least of all when I say I don't feel sure that I want him back. That would mean the fear and the shame again. But he was so marvellous. How right he was! They followed the lead he gave them at Henstead; and even you, dear recluse, know that there was a change of Government last year. And I am quite rich out of the Alethea. For he was right and the poor Professor, who was supposed to know all about it, was absolutely, utterly, hopelessly wrong. And the Crusade's come to nothing, and--and so on.