“Excuse pencil and bad writing.  Nurse has propped me up in bed, but not so high as I should like.

“Darling, I am not ill, only rather weak, and very, very happy.

“Ronnie, I must write to you on this first day of being allowed a pencil, though I shall not, of course, yet send the letter.  In fact, I daresay I shall keep it, and give it to you by-and-by.  But you will like to feel that I wrote at once.

“Darling, how shall I tell you?  Beside me, in your empty place, as I write, lies your little son—­our own baby-boy, Ronnie!

“He came three days ago.

“Oh, Ronnie, it is so wonderful!  He is so like you; though his tiny fingers are all pink and crinkled, and his palms are like little sea-shells.  But he is going to have your artistic hands.  When I cuddle them against my neck, the awful longing and loneliness of these past months seem wiped out.  But only because he is yours, darling, and because I know you are soon coming back to him and to me.

“I could not tell you before you went, because I know you would have felt obliged to give up going, and your book is so important; and I have not told you since, because you must not have anything to worry you while so far away.  Also I was glad to bear it alone, and to save you the hard part.  One soon forgets the hardness, in the joy.

“Jane was with me.

“We are sending no announcement to the papers, for fear you should see it on the way home.  Very few people know.

“Our little son will be six weeks old, when you get back.  I shall be quite strong again.

“I hope you will be able to read this tiny writing.  Nurse would only give me one sheet of paper!

“His eyes are blue.  His little mouth is just like yours.  I kiss it, but it doesn’t kiss back!  He is a darling, Ronnie, but—­he isn’t you!

“Come back soon, to your more than ever loving wife,

“HELEN.

“Yes, the smudgy places are tears, but only because I am rather weak, and so happy.”

Crossing the first page came a short postscript, in firmer hand-writing: 

“After all I am sending this to Leipzig.  I daren’t not tell you before you arrive.  I sometimes feel as if I had done something wrong!  Tell me, directly you take me in your arms, that I did right, and that you are glad.  I am down, as usual, now, and baby is quite well.”

Aubrey’s hands shook as he folded the thin paper, opened a drawer, pushed the letter far into it, and locked the drawer.

Then, with set face, he turned to his own letter to Ronald West’s wife.

“My own Beloved—­

“Yes, I call you so still, because you were mine, and are mine.  You threw me over, giving me no chance to prove that my love for you had made me worthy—­that I would have been worthy.  You sent me into outer darkness, where there was wailing and gnashing of teeth; where the worm of remorse dies—­never.  But, through it all, I loved you still.  I love you to-night, as I never loved you before.  The whole world is nothing to me, excepting as the place on which you walk.