Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering, so to speak, on a week's retreat; and upon your week's retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this, the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that schoolboyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly; but it is hard for a man to write about himself.
In a word, I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me.
No. I don't imagine you "take yourself too seriously." I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything; and I perceive that badinage is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you.
And now I steal out of your presence on tip-toe, and softly close the door. If you call, I shall be waiting. And if you do not call ... I shall be waiting still.
Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy, and have sent her away.
It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved, up to the ears, in a very, very serious affair.
Fortunately Susan was perfectly stolid. If she'd been awkward, goodness knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must have a thorough talk, once for all, in the morning; and she went to bed without a murmur.
Susan a mystic! Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred mystery of Love! Susan in retreat, like a saintly nun!
If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole hotel, it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Ruddington is too terribly in earnest. And it's my fault.
Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my maid, I call it abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed, I hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire business forthwith.
But if I do ... what then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply, and to use a teaspoonful of ink to every page, it will be such a shattering bombshell in the golden midst of his dreams. And the man, on the whole, is too likeable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it.