I write very sadly; for I didn't love him. And now I can love nobody. I shall never quite know what that means. Or is it possible that I loved him without knowing it, and hated him sometimes just because of that? I mean, felt so terribly the times when he was--well, what you know he was sometimes. I find no answer to that. It never was what I thought love meant, what they tell you it means. But if love can mean sinking yourself in another person, living in and through him, meaning him when you say life, then I did love him. At any rate, whatever it was, there it is. Yet I'm not very unhappy. I have a feeling--it will seem strange to you, like all my feelings--that I have had a great share in something great, that without me he wouldn't have been what he was, that I gave as well as took, and brought my part into the common stock. We did odd things, he and I in our partnership, things never to be told. My poor cheeks burn still, and you remember that I cried. But we did great things too, he and I, and at the end we were for a little while together in heart. It wouldn't have lasted? Perhaps not. As it was it lasted long enough--till 'it came', as he said, and he died asking me to tell him that he had spoken well. I'm very glad he knew that I thought he had spoken well. So out of this rambling letter comes the end of it. Be kind to me, be my friend, and be somebody else's lover, dear Weston. For I am spoilt for you. 'Her mad folly'--that was what you thought it. Well, it isn't ended, not even death has ended it. He reaches me still from where he is--Ah, and what is he doing? I can't think of him doing nothing. Shall I hear of all he's done some day? Will he tell me himself, and watch my lips and my eyes as I listen to him? I don't know. These are dreams, and perhaps I wouldn't have them come true; for he might do dreadful things again. But I can't marry you. For to me he is not dead, he lives still, and I am his. I can as little say whether I like it as I could while he was here. But now, as then, it is so; whether I like it is little; it is what has come to me, my lot, my place, my fate, the end of me, the first and last word about me. And--yes--I am content to have it so. He loved me very much, and he was a very great man. You'll wonder again, but I'm a proud woman among women, Weston dear. Goodbye." Dick Benyon laid down the letter, and pushed it back to Weston Marchmont. "Yes, I see," said he. TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.