Accordingly, that night Austin May wrote a letter; and in the morning showed Terwilliger a telegram from America, took his departure, shook hands hard with old Terwilliger, barely touched the slender fingers of his wife, but, when he did so, left the letter in her hand. May kept no copy of this letter; but he remembered it very well. It ran as follows: “GLADYS: “I must not stay in England any more. I cannot bear it. I know that you are unhappy, and I must go where, at least, I shall not see it. Nor can I trust myself with you after our ride of yesterday. “Remember always that, wherever I am, I am always and only yours. This is a very strange thing to say; but I think there are times when men and women should show each other their hearts, however much the truth may shock the prudes and pedants. And I do very much wish to say that if ever you are free, I ask you to marry me. “It is a sad thing that the circumstances of your wedded life are such that I can say these things to you and not offend you. But you have shown me enough of your heart for this. “I go now into Asia. A trivial duty will call me to my family home for one day, on August 14, 1886. Then, if I do not hear of you there, I shall disappear again. After that I shall write you once a year. “Good-by, “A. M.” Scene Fourth THE FINAL ACCOUNTS I. ÆNEAS AND CAMILLA. Poor Austin! A boy’s love feeds on the romance of hopelessness, flourishes apace in the shadow of despair; it delights in patient waiting, in faithful fidelity, in lapses of years; but a man’s is peremptory, immediate, uncompromising. Some secret instinct bids a Romeo to contemplate a tragedy with cheerfulness; and ten to one that his years of gloom change, as they fall behind him, to “_un joli souvenir_.” But a man, middle-aged, knows when he wants his Dulcinea, and he wants her here and now. No glamour of blighted affections can make up for the hard facts of life to him. When a middle-aged man can’t get the woman he wants, there are three recognized and respectable courses open to him. He works a little harder, plays a good deal harder, or he marries someone else. The last was out of the question for a man so consumed by the fires of passion as Austin May, but the fuel of his heart was transformed into nervous energy of the entire system. He plunged again, like a rocket, into a rapid and circuitous course of travel and adventure; and, after a brilliant career through the remote East, descended, like a burned-out stick, some fifteen months later, in San Francisco. Thence he went home.