She crossed the room, unlocked a bureau, took from it a despatch-box and placed it beside her on the couch. “Now help me to tell you by listening calmly. “We had three years of most perfect married life. No woman ever had such a lover, such a husband, as you were to me. No man was ever so adored by his wife as you were by me. We were old enough to understand our happiness and to take it to the full. I was twenty-eight and you were thirty when I lost you; but you were so gloriously young, so full of life and love and laughter. I used to say you would never grow up. Sometimes I felt like wife and mother in one, my heart overflowing with the tenderness of both. Yet you were so wise and strong and grandly good. In all things spiritual and mental I leaned on you and learned of you. “We had one little daughter, a year old on that fatal 12th of August; but, dear though she was to us both, you were my All. My whole body and soul were yours, wrapped up in you. And your love for me was such a sweet deep mystery of tenderness that I scarce dared think of it, save when you were near me. Surely it is given to few to love as we loved, to experience what we experienced. “We lived much in the open; riding, walking, climbing together. You were a magnificent swimmer and loved the sea. Often at dawn, on a summer morning, you would leave our bed, dash down to the shore, and swim up the golden pathway, straight toward the rising sun. “Our room is over this one. Our windows open on to a broad balcony running along the top of the veranda. There a powerful telescope is mounted. “My heart always failed me over these early swims. You were so far from the shore, out in the ocean; no possible help at hand. I used to watch you through the telescope, and, knowing this, you would turn and smile and wave to me and speak my name. Often you dived into the bottomless deep of waters. Then your anxious wife could see nothing but an expanse of sky and ocean. After what seemed an hour of suspense, you would re-appear in the sparkling ripples, laughing, shaking the salt water from your eyes, and bounding along with the strength and grace of a splendid sea-lion. Then I would breathe again and slip back to bed as you neared the shore and I lost you under the lee of the cliff. “But, when you came back to my arms, I used to hold you close to my beating heart and say: ‘Oh, Nigel, my dearest! Some day those treacherous waters will swallow you up, and you will come back to me no more.’ “‘I shall always come back to you, my sweet,’ you would make answer. ‘If I lay fifty fathoms deep, and _you_ called, I should hear and come back.’ “Then you would quite suddenly fall asleep; but I would keep vigil, praying Heaven that you might never lie fifty fathoms deep, and loving the salt on my lips, as I softly kissed your damp hair. “Nigel, do you remember?” The man in the chair put out his hand, groping blindly for the glass, and moistened his lips before he made answer.