of proof that she was unchanged to him—­her first sight of him after the debacle.  It was the unchecked impulse of a noble heart—­and the action showed that Miss Smellie had been unable to do it much harm with her miserable artificialities and stiflings of all that is natural and human and right....  Should he read the letter at once or treasure it up and keep it as a treat in store?  He would hold it in his hand unopened and imagine its contents.  He would spin out the glorious pleasure of possession of an unopened letter from Lucille.  He could, of course, read it hundreds of times—­but he would then soon know it by heart, and although its charm and value would be no less, it would merge with his other memories and become a memory itself.  He did not want it to become a memory too soon.

The longer it remained an anticipation, the more distant the day when it became a memory....

With a groan of “Oh, my brain’s softening and I’m becoming a sentimentalist,” he opened the letter and read Lucille’s loving, cheering—­yet agonizing, maddening—­words:—­

  “MY OWN DARLING DAM,

“If this letter reaches you safely you are to sit down at once and write to me to tell me how to address you by post in the ordinary way.  If you don’t I shall come and haunt the entrance to the Lines and waylay you.  People will think I am a poor soul whom you have married and deserted, or whom you won’t marry. I’ll show up your wicked cruelty to a poor girl!  How would you like your comrades to say ’Look out, Bill, your pore wife’s ‘anging about the gates’ and to have to lie low—­and send out scouts to see if the coast was clear later on?  Don’t you go playing fast and loose with me, master Dam, winning my young affections, making love to me, kissing me—­and then refusing to marry me after it all!  I don’t want to be too hard on you (and I am reasonable enough to admit that one-and-two a day puts things on a smaller scale than I have been accustomed to in the home of my fathers—­or rather uncles, or perhaps uncles-in-law), and like the kind Tailor whom the Haddock advertises (and like the unkind Judge before whom he’ll some day come for something) I will ’give you time’.  But it’s only a respite, Mr. de Warrenne.  You are not going to trifle with my young feelings and escape altogether.  I have my eye on you—­and if I respect your one-and-twopence a day now, it is on the clear understanding that you share my Little All on the day I come of age.  I will trust you once more, although you have treated me so—­bolting and hiding from your confiding fiancee.

“So write and tell me what you call yourself, so that I can write to you regularly and satisfy myself that you are not escaping me again.  How could you treat a poor trusting female so—­and then when she had found you again, and was showing her delight and begging to be married and settled in life—­to rush away from