Going to Peerson’s bed, Dam snatched the letter, returned to his own, and flung himself down again—his heart pumping as though he had just finished a mile race. _Lucille had got a letter to him somehow_. Lucille was not going to drop him yet—in spite of having seen him a red-handed, crop-haired, “quiff”-wearing, coarse-looking soldier…. Was there another woman in the world like Lucille? Would any other girl have so risen superior to her breeding, and the teachings of Miss Smellie, as to do what she thought right, regardless of public scandal…? But he must not give her the opportunity of being seen talking to a soldier again—much less kissing one. Not that she would want to kiss him again like that. That was the kiss of welcome, of encouragement, of proof that she was unchanged to him—her first sight of him after the _débâcle_. It was the unchecked impulse of a noble heart—and the action showed that Miss Smellie had been unable to do it much harm with her miserable artificialities and stiflings of all that is natural and human and right…. Should he read the letter at once or treasure it up and keep it as a treat in store? He would hold it in his hand unopened and imagine its contents. He would spin out the glorious pleasure of possession of an unopened letter from Lucille. He could, of course, read it hundreds of times—but he would then soon know it by heart, and although its charm and value would be no less, it would merge with his other memories and become a memory itself. He did not want it to become a memory too soon. The longer it remained an anticipation, the more distant the day when it became a memory…. With a groan of “Oh, my brain’s softening and I’m becoming a sentimentalist,” he opened the letter and read Lucille’s loving, cheering—yet agonizing, maddening—words:— “MY OWN DARLING DAM,