work of mine while I am gone; and you can't come
here and inquire for "August First," can you, now? So this is all--the
end. Suddenly I feel inadequate and leaden. It is all over--the one
chance for real happiness which I have had in my butterfly days--over.
But you have changed earth and heaven--I want you to know it. I can't
even now say that if Uncle Ted shouldn't need me; if the hideous,
creeping monster should begin its work visibly on me, that I might not
some day use the pistol. But I do say that because of you I will try
to make any living that I may do count for something, for somebody. I
am trying. You are to know about that in time.

And now the color is going out of my life--you are going. Some day you
will care for some one else more than you think now you care for me.
I'm leaving you free for that--but it's all I can do. Why must my life
be wreck and suffering? Why may I not have the common happinesses?
Why may I not love you--be there for you "at the end of the day"? The
blows are raining hard; I'm beaten close to earth. Has God forsaken
me? I can only cling tight to the thin line of my duty to Uncle Ted; I
can't see any further than that. Good-by.

AUGUST FIRST.

The man shook as if in an ague. He laid the letter on a table and
fastened it open with weights so that the May breeze, frolicking
through the top of the Parish House, might not blow it away. Standing
over it, bending to it, sitting down, he read it and re-read it, and
paced the room and came back and bent over it. He groaned as he looked
at the date. Seven months ago if he had had it--what could have held
him? She loved him--what on earth could have kept him from her,
knowing that? Not illness nor oceans or her will. No, not her will,
if she cared; and she had said it. He would have swept down her will
like a tidal wave, knowing that.

Seven months ago! He would have followed her to Germany. He laughed
at the thought that she believed herself hidden from him. The world
was not big enough to hide her. What was a trip to Germany--to
Madagascar? But now--where might she not be--what might not have
happened? She might be dead. Worse--and this thought stopped his
pulse--she might be married.

That was the big, underlying terror of his mind. In his restless
pacing he stopped suddenly as if frozen. His brain was working this
way and that, searching for light. In a moment he knew what he would
do. He dashed down