"Dear Olympia" (the letter said), "it was hard to leave without a last word. All the way here I have been thinking of our little talk--if that can be called a talk where one side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystifying. I told you that I loved you. I thrill even yet with the joy of that. You are so wayward and capricious, so coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your car long enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known. You didn't say that you loved me; but, dear Olympia, neither did you say that you did not. The rose has fallen on the hem of your robe. When its fragrance steals into your senses, you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom. It is the war that divides us, you say. It will soon pass. And who knows what may happen to make you glad that, since there must be strife, I am one of the enemy rather than a stranger? I feel that we shall be brought together in danger, when it may be my happiness to serve you or yours. But, even if I am not so favored, I shall still ask your love. You know our Southern ways. Whom I love my mother loves. But my mother and sister Rosa have loved you long and dearly. They have known you as long as I have, and when you consent to come to us you will take no stranger's place in the heart and home of the family. Remember the motto you gave me. You are a woman, therefore tender; I am daring, Heaven knows, in aspiring to such a reward as your love. But I dare to love you; if you cast that love from you, love will lose its tenderness, bravery its daring. One of the high mountains of hope whereon I sun my fainting soul is the knowledge that you love no one else. I won't say that you should in love hold to the ride 'first come first served,' but I do say, 'first dare, first win.' And when you reflect on what you said about the accident of war separating us, just put Jack in my place. What would you think of a Southern girl who should refuse him because he fought on the side of his family and his State? What is the old line? 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' I'm sure I couldn't ask your love if there were not honor in my own. The war will be over and forgotten in six months, but you and I are young; we have long years before us. The right will win in the contest, and, right or wrong, I am yours, and only yours, while there are life in my body and hope in my soul. VINCENT."