Through the small sheaf of envelopes his thick fingers wandered. Suddenly, the man’s lack-lustre look brightened to one of astonishment. Midway in the package was an envelope in Desirée Shevlin’s hand. Letting the rest of the letters slide to the swaying floor the Fighter nervously caught this up. Why had she written to the office instead of to his hotel? Probably, he thought, by mere mistake. A mistake that meant a few moments of surcease now from his nightmare journey. With ice-damp fingers Conover held the letter; tore it open as though the ripping of the paper caused him physical pain; smoothed wide the pages with awkward, awed gentleness, and read: “Heart’s Dearest:--Just as soon as you’ve read this, you can come straight to see me. Honestly! For I’ll be at home. Mrs. Hawarden’s sister is ill. We only heard of it by this noon’s mail and we are leaving by the night train. At first I wanted to telegraph you at the Capital. But if I do I’m so afraid you will drop everything and come to meet me. And you _mustn’t_. You must stay at the Capital till you win your fight there for all the men who have put money in Steeloid. We are so happy we can’t afford to do anything now to make other people blue. Can we? So stay and win for them. That’s why I’m sending this to your office. “You have just come back to Granite all tired from your work. Then you saw my letter and opened it and--I’m _afraid_ you’re on your way to my house before you’ve gotten this far. “Oh, dear! This is the last of my little batch of Adirondack love letters. And I believe you’re rushing off to see me instead of reading it. And it isn’t a love letter after all. For it’s going to be only a note. I’ve all my packing to do and the ‘white-horse chariot’ comes for our trunks at six. It has been a beautiful vacation. Two weeks of it was heaven. And the memory of that last golden day of ours makes something queer come into my throat. “But I’m oh so glad,--so _glad_--we are coming away. Every minute brings me nearer to Granite. You won’t be there when I arrive; but I’ll be where you have lived. And I’ll be waiting for you every minute till you come back. Just thinking about you and loving you, heart of my heart. “I’m glad, too, that we are leaving the Antlers before everyone else does. It is sad, somehow, to watch the boat-loads go off into the dark and to be part of the dwindling group that is left. It is pleasantest to go away from a place,--yes, and from the world, too, I should think,--while everything is at its height; before friends thin out and the jolly crowd falls away and the happy, happy times begin to end. To leave everything in the flood-tide of the fun and to remember it as it was at its best; to be remembered as a little part of the happiness of it all. Not as one of the few last ones left behind.