"When I am gone, if you care to know the story of my first love, you will find it fully recorded in a manuscript which was written some years ago. Heaven knows what inspired me to go over that old ground, to write of myself almost as I might have written of another man. It was the whim of an idle brain. I felt a strange sad pleasure in recalling every detail of my brief love-story--in conjuring up looks and tones, the very atmosphere of the commonplace surroundings through which my sweet girl and I moved. No touch of romance, no splendour of scenery, no gaiety of racecourse or public garden made the background of our love. A dull London street, a dull London parlour were all we had for a paradise, and God knows we needed no more. You will smile at a middle-aged man's folly in lingering fondly over the record of his own love-story, instead of projecting himself into the ideal world and weaving a romance of shadows. If I had been a woman, I might have found a diversion for my empty days in writing novels, in every one of which my sweetheart and I would have lived again, and loved and parted again, under various disguises. But I had not the feminine capacity for fiction. It pleased me to write of myself and my love in sober truthfulness. You will read with a mind in touch with mine, Allan; and though you may smile at your father's folly, there will be no scornfulness in your smile." "My dear, dear father, God knows there will be no smile on these lips of mine if I am to read the story--after our parting. God grant the day for that reading may be far off." "I will do nothing to hasten it, Allan. Your companionship has renewed my pleasure in life. You can never know how I missed you when this house ceased to be your home. It was different when you were at the University--the short terms, the short distance between here and Cambridge, made parting seem less than parting. But when you transferred yourself to a home of your own, and half a dozen counties divided us, I began to feel that I had lost my only son." "You had but to summon me." "I know, I know. But I could not be so selfish as to bring you away from your pleasant surroundings, the prettier country, the more genial climate, your hunting, your falconry, your golf, and your new neighbours. A sick man is a privileged egotist; but even now I feel I am wrong in letting you stay here and lose the best part of the hunting season--to say nothing of that other loss, which, no doubt, you feel more keenly, the loss of your sweetheart's society." "You need not think about it, father, for I mean to stay. Please regard me as a fixture. If you keep as well next week as you are to-day, I may take a run to Wilts, just to see how Suzette and her father are getting on, and to look round my stable; but I shall be away at most one night." "Go to-morrow, Allan. I know you are dying to see her." "Then, perhaps, to-morrow. You really are wonderfully well, are you not?"