I wish I could make you understand what he is like and how entirely companionable we are.  We think the same about everything—­ I am afraid I have a tendency to make over my ideas to match his!  But he is almost always right; he ought to be, you know, for he has fourteen years’ start of me.  In other ways, though, he’s just an overgrown boy, and he does need looking after—­ he hasn’t any sense about wearing rubbers when it rains.  He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it’s dreadful when two people’s senses of humour are antagonistic.  I don’t believe there’s any bridging that gulf!

And he is—­Oh, well!  He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him.  The whole world seems empty and aching.  I hate the moonlight because it’s beautiful and he isn’t here to see it with me.  But maybe you’ve loved somebody, too, and you know?  If you have, I don’t need to explain; if you haven’t, I can’t explain.

Anyway, that’s the way I feel—­and I’ve refused to marry him.

I didn’t tell him why; I was just dumb and miserable.  I couldn’t think of anything to say.  And now he has gone away imagining that I want to marry Jimmie McBride—­I don’t in the least, I wouldn’t think of marrying Jimmie; he isn’t grown up enough.  But Master Jervie and I got into a dreadful muddle of misunderstanding and we both hurt each other’s feelings.  The reason I sent him away was not because I didn’t care for him, but because I cared for him so much.  I was afraid he would regret it in the future—­ and I couldn’t stand that!  It didn’t seem right for a person of my lack of antecedents to marry into any such family as his.  I never told him about the orphan asylum, and I hated to explain that I didn’t know who I was.  I may be dreadful, you know.  And his family are proud—­and I’m proud, too!

Also, I felt sort of bound to you.  After having been educated to be a writer, I must at least try to be one; it would scarcely be fair to accept your education and then go off and not use it.  But now that I am going to be able to pay back the money, I feel that I have partially discharged that debt—­besides, I suppose I could keep on being a writer even if I did marry.  The two professions are not necessarily exclusive.

I’ve been thinking very hard about it.  Of course he is a Socialist, and he has unconventional ideas; maybe he wouldn’t mind marrying into the proletariat so much as some men might.  Perhaps when two people are exactly in accord, and always happy when together and lonely when apart, they ought not to let anything in the world stand between them.  Of course I want to believe that!  But I’d like to get your unemotional opinion.  You probably belong to a Family also, and will look at it from a worldly point of view and not just a sympathetic, human point of view—­so you see how brave I am to lay it before you.

Suppose I go to him and explain that the trouble isn’t Jimmie, but is the John Grier Home—­would that be a dreadful thing for me to do?  It would take a great deal of courage.  I’d almost rather be miserable for the rest of my life.