In the Tower Rooms, Midnight---It is best to write it. What I might have said to you in the garden
would have been halting at best. How could I speak it all with your
clear eyes upon me--all the sordid history of those years which are
best buried, but whose ghosts to-night have risen again?
If in these months--this year that I have lived in these rooms, I have
seemed to hide that which you will now know, it was not because I
wanted to set myself before you as something more than I am. Not that
I wished to deceive. It was simply that the thought of the old life
brought a surging sense of helplessness, of hopelessness, of rebellion
against fate, Having put it behind me, I have not wished to talk about
it--to think about it--to have it, in all its tarnished tragedy, held
up before your earnest, shining eyes.
For you have never known such things as I have to tell you, Mary
Ballard. There has been sorrow in your life, and, I have seen of late,
suffering for those you love. But, as yet, you have not doffed an
ideal. You have not bowed that brave young head of yours. You have
never yet turned your back upon the things which might have been.
As I have turned mine. I wish sometimes that you might have known me
before the happening of these things which I am to tell you. But I
wish more than all, that I might have known you. Until I came here, I
did not dream that there was such a woman in the world as you. I had
thought of women first, as a chivalrous boy thinks, later, as a
disillusioned man. But of a woman like a young and ardent soldier, on
fire to fight the winning battles of the world--of such a woman I had
never dreamed.
But this year has taught me. I have seen you pushing away from you the
things which would have charmed most women I have seen you pushing
away wealth, and love for the mere sake of loving. I have seen you
willing to work that you might hold undimmed the ideal which you had
set for your womanhood. Loving and love-worthy, you have not been
willing to receive unless you could give, give from the fulness of that
generous nature of yours. And out of that generosity, you have given
me your friendship.
And now; as I write the things which your clear eyes are to read, I am
wondering whether that friendship will be withdrawn. Will you when you
have heard of my losing battle, find anything in me that is
worthy--will there be anything saved out of the wreck of your thought
of me?