king for so long. Don't you know the feeling one gets
sometimes when one has put off a thing again and again, and then there
suddenly comes an awful spasm and one fairly spreads oneself? . . .
Like putting one's bills away for months on end, and then one day
becoming insane and paying the whole lot. I've been putting this off,
Derek, for what I'm going to write will hurt you . . . almost as much
as it hurts me. I'm not going to put in any of the usual cant about
not thinking too hardly of me; I don't think somehow we are that sort.
But I can't marry you. I meant to lead up to that gradually, but the
pen sort of slipped--and, anyway you'd have known what was coming.

I can't marry you, old man--although I love you better than I ever
thought I'd love anyone. You know the reasons why, so I won't labour
them again. They may be right and they may be wrong; I don't
know--I've given up trying to think. I suppose one's got to take this
world as it is, and not as it might be if we had our own way. . . .
And I can't buy my happiness with Blandford, Derek--I just can't.

I went down there the morning after Our Day--oh! my God! boy, how I
loved that time--and I saw Father. He was just broken down with it
all; he seemed an old, old man. And after luncheon in the study he
told me all about it. I didn't try to follow all the facts and
figures--what was the use? I just sat there looking out over
Blandford--my home--and I realised that very soon it would be that no
longer. I even saw the horrible man smoking his cigar with the band on
it in Father's chair.

Derek, my dear--what could I do? I knew that I could save the
situation if I wanted to; I knew that it was my happiness and yours, my
dear, that would have to be sacrificed to do it. But when the old Dad
put his arm round my waist and raised his face to mine--and his dear
mouth was all working--I just couldn't bear it.

So I lied to him, Derek. I told him that Mr. Baxter loved me, and that
I loved Mr. Baxter. Two lies--for that man merely wants me as a
desirable addition to his furniture--and I, why sometimes I think I
hate him. But, oh! my dear, if you'd seen my Father's face; seen the
dawning of a wonderful hope. . . . I just couldn't think of anything
except him--and so I went on lying, and I didn't falter. Gradually he
straightened up; twenty years seemed to slip from him . . ..

"My dear," he said. "I wouldn't have you unhappy; I wouldn't have you
marry