"DEAR CLARE--You haven't answered my letter. I did think you would, and now I'm a prey to all sorts of awful and, no doubt, quite ridiculous fears. And I'm going to ask you again, half-believing that you didn't receive my last letter--may I write to you? May I write to you whenever I want? I can't have your company, I know--surely you haven't the heart to deny me the friendship I can get by writing to you? You needn't answer: I promise I will never ask for an answer. I don't care if the letters I write offend you or not; there is only one case in which I should like you to be good enough to reply to me and tell me not to write again. And that is if you were beginning to forget me--if letters from me were beginning to be a bore to you. _Please_, therefore, let me write.--Yours, KENNETH SPEED." To that there came a reply by return of post: "MY DEAR KENNETH SPEED,--I think correspondence between us is both unwise and unnecessary, but I don't see how I can prevent you from writing if you wish to. And you need not fear that I shall forget you.--CLARE." He replied, immediately, and with his soul tingling with the renewal of happiness: "DEAR CLARE,--Thank God you can't stop me from writing, and thank God you know you can't. I don't feel unhappy now that I can write to you, now that I know you will read what I write. I feel so unreticent where you are concerned--I want you to _understand_, and I don't really care, when you have understood, whether you condemn or not. This is going (perhaps) to be a longish letter; I'm alone in the lounge of this entirely God-forsaken hotel--Helen is putting on a frock for dinner, and I've got a quarter-of-an-hour for you. "This is what I've found out since I've come to Seacliffe. I've found out the true position of you and me. You've sunk far deeper into my soul than I have ever guessed, and I don't honestly know how on earth I'm to get rid of you! For the last ten days I've been fighting hard to drive you away, but I'm afraid I've been defeated. You're there still, securely entrenched as ever, and you simply won't budge. The only times I don't think of you are the times when I'm too utterly tired out to think of anything or anybody. Worse still, the stronger I get the more I want you. Why can't I stop it? You yourself said during our memorable interview after the 'rag' that it wasn't a bit of good trying to stop loving somebody. So _you_ know, as well as me--am I to conclude that, you Hound of Heaven? "But you can't get rid of me, I hope, any more than I can of you. You may go to the uttermost ends of the earth, but it won't matter. I shall still have you, I shall always bore you--in fact, I've got you now, haven't I? Don't we belong to each other in spite of ourselves?