I think it was then, as we walked toward the inclosure, that I made up my mind to let Nancy hear what Olaf had to say to her.

She stayed out late that night—­there was a dinner and a dance—­and Anthony brought her home.  I confess that I felt like a traitor as I heard the murmur of his voice in the hall.

But when he had gone, and Nancy passed my door on her way to her room, I called her, and she came in.

I was in bed, and I had the letter in my hand.  “I want you to read it,” I said.  “It is from Olaf Thoresen.”

She looked at it, and asked, “When did it come?”

“Two months ago.  The day that he left.”

“Why haven’t you shown it to me?”

“I couldn’t make up my mind.  I do not know even now that I am right in letting you see it.  But I feel that you have a right to see it.  It is you who must answer it.  Not I.”

When she had gone, I turned to the chapter in my book where Becky weeps crocodile tears over poor Rawdon Crawley on the night before Waterloo.  There is no scene in modern literature to match it.  But I couldn’t get my mind on it.  Nancy was reading Olaf’s letter!

I kept a copy of it, and here it is: 

“I knew when I first saw her in the garden that she was the One Woman.  I had wanted sea-blood, and when she came, ready for a dip in the sea, it seemed a sign.  One knows these things somehow, and I knew.  I shan’t attempt to explain it.

“When you told me of her lover, I felt that Fate had played a trick on me.  I could not now with honor pursue the woman who was promised to another.  Yet I permitted myself that one day—­the day on my boat.

“I learned in those hours that I spent with her that she had been molded by the man she is to marry and that in the years to come she will shrink to the measure of his demands upon her.  She is feminine enough to be swayed by masculine will.  That is at once her strength and her weakness.  Loving a man who will love her for the wonder of her womanhood, she will fulfill her greatest destiny.  Loving, on the other hand, one who aspires only to fit her into some attenuated social scheme, she will wither and fade.  I think you know that this is true, that you will not accuse me of being unfair to any one.

     “And now may I tell you what my dreams have been for her?

“I am not young.  I mean I am past those hot and early years when men play—­Romeo.  The dream that is mine is one which has come to a man of thirty, who, having seen the world, has weighed it and wants—­something more.

“I have told you of my house in that hidden land which is washed by the sea.  I want to spend the rest of my days there, and I had hoped that some woman might be found whose love of life, whose love of adventure, whose love of me, might be so strong that she would see nothing strange in my demand that she forsake all others and