then you will
change my world into a paradise. No work will be too
hard, no difficulty too great to surmount, if it will
help me the sooner to come back to you. But if, on the
other hand, you tell me or leave me to guess that I am
a fool for thinking that you would waste your beauty
and your sweetness on waiting for a good-for-nothing
scamp like me, why, then, I shall understand. I shall
go out to America--or wherever that place called
Australia may be--but maybe I shall never come back.
But I should never curse you, dear heart, I should
never cease to love you: I should quite understand.

"I have got one of the nurses at the hospital to write
this letter for me, to put my rough words into good
Hungarian and to write down my thoughts in a good,
clear hand. That is how it comes to be so well written.
You know I was never much of a hand with a pen and
paper, but I do love you, my dove! My God, how I love
you.

"The nurse says that Australia is not in America at
all--that it is a different place altogether. Well! I
do not care where it is. I am going there because there
I can earn one hundred florins a month, and save enough
in two years to marry you and keep you in comfort. But
I shall not see you, my dove, before I go: if I saw you
again, if I saw Hungary again, our village, our alfold,
Heaven help me! but I don't think I would have the
heart to go away again.

"Farewell, dear heart, I go away full of hope. We go
off next week in a big, big ship from here. I go full
of sadness, but if you do want me to come back just
write me a little letter with the one word 'Yes,' and
address it as above. Then will my sadness be changed to
heavenly joy and hope. But if it is to be 'No,' then
tell me so quite truly, and I will understand.

"Then, as now, may God protect you, my dove, my heart,

"Your ever-devoted

"ANDOR."

The letter fell out of Elsa's hands on to her knee. She took no heed of
it, she was staring out into the immensity far away, into the
fast-gathering gloom. Two years ago! Two years of sorrow and vain
regrets which never need have been. One word from her father or from the
postman, the feel of crisp paper in her father's bunda when it was put
away two years ago, and the whole course of her life would have been
changed.