“Am I not developing ‘self-control and balance’? Here I sit writing news to you while my heart is screaming aloud with joy, crying ‘Dam is coming home. Dam’s troubles are over. Dam is saved!’ Because if you are ever so ‘ill,’ Darling, there is nothing on earth to prevent your coming to your old home at once—and if we can’t marry we can be pals for evermore in the dear old place of our childhood. But of _course_ we can marry. Hurry home, and if any Harley Street doctor gives you even a doubtful look, throw him up his own stairs to show how feeble you are, or tie his poker round his neck in a neat bow, and refuse to undo it until he apologizes. I’m sure you could! ‘_Ill_’ indeed! If you can’t have a little fit, on the rare occasions when you see a snake, without fools saying you are ill or dotty or something, it is a pity! Anyhow there is one small woman who understands, and if she can’t marry you she can at any rate be your inseparable pal—and if the Piffling Little World likes to talk scandal, in spite of Auntie Yvette’s presence—why it will be amusing. Cable, Darling! I am just bursting with excitement and joy—and fear (that something may go wrong at the last moment). If it saved a single day I should start for Motipur myself at once. If we passed in mid-ocean I should jump overboard and swim to your ship. Then you’d do the same, and we should ‘get left,’ and look silly…. Oh, what nonsense I am talking—but I don’t think I shall talk anything else again—for sheer joy! “You can’t write me a lot of bosh _now_ about ‘spoiling my life’ and how you’d be ten times more miserable if I were your wife. Fancy—a soldier to-day and a ‘landed proprietor’ to-morrow! How I wish you were a _landed_ traveller, and were in the train from Plymouth—no, from Dover and London, because of course you’d come the quickest way. Did my cable surprise you very much? “I enclose fifty ten-pound notes, as I suppose they will be quicker and easier for you to cash than those ‘draft’ things, and they’ll be quite safe in the insured packet. Send a cable at once, Darling. If you don’t I shall imagine awful things and perhaps die of a broken heart or some other silly trifle. “Mind then:—Cable to-day; Start to-morrow; Get here in a fortnight—and keep a beady eye open at Port Said and Brindisi and places—in case there has been time for me to get there. “Au revoir. Darling Dam, “Your “LUCILLE. “Three cheers! And a million more!”