I have just come here from the New Forest: you will not have heard what has happened. Tom Merivale is dead, the Hermit, you know. I will tell you about it all when we meet; now I can only say that the sorrows of the world were, I believe, suddenly revealed to him, and he died of it. And some of the sorrows of the world, you poor dear, have been revealed to Evelyn and you, and perhaps to me. Only we have got to live and not die. And before we meet I want very sincerely and humbly to ask your pardon for all the hard things I have thought and said and done. Please try to grant it me before you see me, so that I know that it is implied in your handshake. So unless you stop me you will see me on the evening of the day on which you get this, and before then I want you to grant me a further favour. You must accept, please, tacitly and without any word on the subject, just the little material assistance that I can give you and him. In other words, do not let any material anxiety increase or aggravate what you two _have_ to endure, and which no one can help you about. Only where you can be helped, accept such help, and let the privilege of helping you be mine. In doing this you will be helping me more than I can say: you will be helping me to learn the lesson of the sorrows of the world, which, as I now know, we must all learn. And I am,--Your loving friend, PHILIP HOME. P.S.--I express myself badly; but I think you can easily understand what I mean. Just read my letter straightforwardly, I mean all I have said, and I think I have said all I mean. How fully my mother endorses it all, I need not tell you. She says (she has just read it) that it is too business-like. Well, I'm a business man, but her criticism encourages me to think that it is clear. Madge read this through once without comprehension: the predominant feeling in her mind was that it was some kind stranger who was writing to her; she did not know the man. Yet even as she read there were things very familiar to her: Philip somehow was in it all. Then at the second reading the simplicity and clearness of it--that which Mrs. Home had called business-like--made itself felt, and it was Philip, after all, the potential Philip. But some immense change had happened, yet immense though it was, she saw now it was no stranger who had written it, but he himself, only--only he had learned something, as he said.