“Dear Mister Treevor,

“Do you remember me?  I am in awful trouble.  Husband died and also baby.  I sent here to be sold for slave to rich Chinaman.  Please you buy me.  Send my price 500 dollars to Mrs. Hackett, address as per above.

    “Dear Treevor, dear Treevor, do come to me.  You remember the wood?

    “I am yours not sold yet,

    “SUZEE.”

I read this through with a feeling of amaze.  Suzee had for so long been a forgotten quantity to me, something left in the past of the Alaskan trip, like the stars of the North, that her memory, thrown back suddenly on me like this, startled me.

I handed the letter to Viola in silence.  She read it through, and then pushed it away from her.

“I told you so.  There is no peace in this world!”

“But it needn’t affect us, dearest,” I said.  “Suzee is nothing to me now.  I don’t want her.  There is nothing to distress you.”

“But you’ll have to do something about it, I suppose,” returned Viola gloomily.  She was making the tea, and I saw her hands shook.

“I believe you would like to go.  It would be a new experience for you.  You would go if that letter came to you when you were living as a bachelor, wouldn’t you?”

“Possibly I might.  But then, of course, when one is free it is different.  Everything is different.”

“Free!” murmured Viola, her eyes filling.  “I hate to think I am tying you.”

“It is not that,” I said gently; “one does not want to do the same things, nor care about them.”

“You wanted Veronica and didn’t have her on my account, I am not going to prevent you doing this.  You must go if you want to.”

She threw herself into the easy chair with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.  The tears welled up to her eyes and poured down her white face uncontrollably.

“Dearest, dear little girl,” I said, drawing her into my arms, “you are upsetting yourself for nothing.  I don’t want to go, I shan’t think of going.  I am perfectly happy; you are everything to me.”

She leant her soft head against me in silence, sobbing for some seconds.

“Come and have breakfast,” I said, stroking her hair gently, “and don’t let us think anything more about it.  If fifty Suzees were calling me I should not want to go.”

Viola dried her eyes and came to the table in silence.  We had other letters to open, and we discussed these, and no further reference was made to Suzee then.

Viola looked white and abstracted all day, but it was not till after dinner, when we were taking our coffee on the verandah, that she gave me any clew to her thoughts.  Then she said suddenly: 

“Trevor, I want you to let me go away from you for a year.”

I gazed at her in astonishment.  She looked very wretched.  All the usual bright colour of her face had fled.  Her eyes were large, with the pupils widely dilated in them.  There was a determined, fixed expression on the pale lips that frightened me.