I wrote to you on the Tuesday; and you kept me waiting four days. But I knew you would reply; even as I know that, when this month is over, Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But, while I waited, I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind (forgive me again, dear lady!) was this. I expected your letter would be ... how shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond--but a rough one! To be blunt, I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg and Salamanca had made me too punctilious; and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an adorable Susan, a wise Susan ... but a Susan who couldn’t spell! But what has happened? Of course, mere spelling and grammar are less than the dust in the balance; and if you sinned against them unto seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan’s letters better expressed than my own; they outstrip the utmost I ever dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approach the sacred mystery of Love. Where I was merely superfine and sentimental, you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is the right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit, that even if the spell of her beauty were broken, I should still devote my whole life to winning her, though the obstacles were a thousand times as great. Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering, so to speak, on a week’s retreat; and upon your week’s retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man to write about himself. In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me. No. I don’t imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you. And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I shall be waiting still. R. Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy, and have sent her away. It’s no use blinking the fact that I’m involved, up to the ears, in a very, very serious affair. _Midnight_.