w her
eyes that way; she saw something white appear beneath the door--in the
old house the sills were not tight. The white rectangle was obviously a
letter.

Her curiosity alive, she lay looking at this apparition for some time,
unwilling to be heard to move even by a maidservant. But at length she
arose, stole across the floor, picked up the missive, and went back to
her bed. She examined the envelope--it was of a heavy plain paper; the
address--it was in a hand she had seen but once, on the day when she had
copied many pages of material upon the typewriter for her Uncle
Calvin--a rather compact, very regular and positive hand, unmistakably
that of a person of education and character.

She opened the letter with fingers that hesitated. Midsummer Day was at
hand; it had begun early! Two closely written sheets appeared. Sitting
among her pillows, her curly, dusky locks tumbling all about her face,
her pulses beating now so fast they shook the paper in her fingers, she
read his letter:

* * * * *

My Roberta: I can't begin any other way, for, even though you should
never let me use the words again, you have become such a part of me, both
of the man I am and of the man I want and mean to become, that in some
degree you will always belong to me in spite of yourself.

Why do I write to you to-day? Because there are things I want to say to
you which I could never wait to say when I see you, but which I want you
to know before you answer me. I don't want to tell you "the story of my
life," but I do feel that you must understand a few of my thoughts, for
only so can I be sure that you know me at all.

Before I came to your home, one night last October, I had unconsciously
settled into a way of living which as a rule seemed to me all-sufficient.
My friends, my clubs, my books--yes, I care for my books more than you
have ever discovered--my plans for travel, made up a life which satisfied
me--a part of the time. Deep down somewhere was a sense of unrest, a
knowledge that I was neither getting nor giving all that I was meant
to. But this I was accustomed to stifle--except at unhappy hours when
stifling would not work, and then I was frankly miserable. Mostly,
however, my time was so filled with diversion of one sort or another
that I managed to keep such hours from over-whelming me; I worried
through them somehow and forgot them as soon as I could.

From the first day that I came through your