“Going home he kissed me—­

“When I went home that night the world was all different.  The world was too wonderful for even thoughts.  Too beautiful to believe it could be the world.

“I was in the arms of the wonderful new beauty of the world.  Something in my heart which had been crouching down afraid and cold and sad grew warm and live and glad.  Life grew so lovely; and as the days went on I think I grew lovely too.  He said so; said love was making me radiant—­that I was wonderful—­that I was a child of love.

“Those days when I was in the dream, folded in the dream, days before any of it fell away, they were golden days, singing days—­days there are no words for.

“We saw each other often.  He said business kept him away from Chicago much of the time.  I didn’t know he was in the army; I suppose now he belonged in some place near there.  And I think you told me he was not married.  He said he was—­but was going to be divorced some day.  But I didn’t seem to care—­didn’t think much about it.  Nothing really mattered except the love.

“Then there came a time when I knew I was trying to keep a door shut—­keep the happiness in and the thoughts out.  It wasn’t that I came to think it was wrong.  But the awful fear that wanted to get into my heart was that it was not beautiful.

“And it wasn’t beautiful because to him it wasn’t beautiful.  It was only—­what shall I say—­would there be such a thing as usurping beauty?  That was the thought—­the fear—­I tried and tried to push away.  I see I can’t tell it; no matter how much we may want to tell everything—­no matter how willing we are—­there are things can’t be told, so I’ll just have to say that things happened that forced the door open, and I had to know that what to me was—­oh what shall I say, Katie?—­was like the prayer at the heart of a dream—­didn’t, to him, have anything to do with dreams, or prayers, or beautiful, far-away things that speak to you from the stars.

“And having nothing to do with them, he seemed to be pushing them away, crowding them out, hurting them.

“I haven’t told it at all.  I can’t.  But, Katie, you’re in the army, you must admire courage and I want you to take my word for it when I tell you I did what it took courage to do.  I think you’d let me live on in your heart as Ann if you knew what I gave up—­and just for something all dim and distant I had no assurance I’d ever come near to.  For oh, Katie—­when you love love—­need it—­it’s not so easy to let go what’s the closest you’ve come to it.  Not so easy to turn from the most beautiful thing you’ve known—­just because something very far away whispers to you that you’re hurting beauty.

“I didn’t go back.  One night my Something Somewhere called me away—­and I left the only real thing I had—­and I didn’t go back.  I don’t know—­maybe I’m overestimating myself—­perhaps I’m just measuring it by the suffering—­but it seems to me, Katie, that you needn’t despise yourself when loneliness can’t take you back to the substitutes offered for your Something Somewhere.  Something in you had been brave; something in you has been faithful—­and what you’ve actually done doesn’t matter much in comparison with that.