Athalie

As she came, pensively, from her morning bath into the sunny front

room Athalie noticed the corner of an envelope projecting from beneath

her door.

For one heavenly moment the old delight surprised her at sight of

Clive's handwriting,--for one moment only, before an overwhelming

reaction scoured her heart of tenderness and joy; and the terrible

resurgence of pain and grief wrung a low cry from her: "Why couldn't

he let me alone!" And she crumpled the letter fiercely in her clenched

hand.

Minute after minute she stood there, her white hand tightening as

though to strangle the speech written there on those crushed

sheets--perhaps to throttle and silence the faint, persistent cry of

her own heart pleading a hearing for the man who had written to her at

last.

And after a while her nerveless hand relaxed; she looked down at the

crushed 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.