ushed thing in her palm for a long time before she smoothed it out
and finally opened it.

He wrote:

"It is too long a story to go into in detail. I couldn't,
anyway. My mother had desired it for a long time. I have
nothing to say about it except this: I would not for all the
world have had you receive the first information from the
columns of a newspaper. Of that part of it I have a right to
speak, because the announcement was made without my knowledge
or consent. And I'll say more: it was made even before I
myself was aware that an engagement existed.

"Don't mistake what I write you, Athalie. I am not trying to
escape any responsibility excepting that of premature
publicity. Whatever else has happened I am fully responsible
for.

"And so--what can I have to say to you, Athalie? Silence were
decenter perhaps--God knows!--and He knows, too, that in me
he fashioned but an irresolute character, void of the initial
courage of conviction, without deep and sturdy belief,
unsteady to a true course set, and lacking in rugged purpose.

"It is not stupidity: in the bottom of my own heart I _know_!
Custom, habit, acquired and inculcated acquiescence in
unanalysed beliefs--these require more than irresolution and
a negative disposition to fight them and overcome them.

"Athalie, the news you must have read in the newspapers
should first have come from me. Among many, many debts I must
ever owe you, that one at least was due you. And I defaulted;
but not through any fault of mine.

"I could not rest until you knew this. Whatever you may think
about me now--however lightly you weigh me--remember this--if
you ever remember me at all in the years to come: I was aware
of my paramount debt: I should have paid it had the
opportunity not been taken out of my own hands. And that debt
paramount was to inform you first of anybody concerning what
you read in a public newspaper.

"Now there remains nothing more for me to say that you would
care to hear. You would no longer care to know,--would
probably not believe me if I should tell you what you have
been to me--and still are--and still are, Athalie!
Athalie!--"

The letter ended there with her name. She kept it all day; but that
night she destroyed it. And it was a week before she wrote him:

"--Thank you for your letter, Clive. I hope all is well with
you an