“When the news came of your father’s death I was in the Canadian woods.  I started home immediately; I had no fixed plan, except to see you, to help you in some way.  In New York I had a telegram saying that my mother was very ill at Bar Harbor.  There was nothing to do but to go to her, of course.  It was before this that she had sent me Nick van Rensselaer’s letter, and the idea came to me from that, that I might be the one to do something to make your life a bit happier.  You may think it was reparation for the suffering I had caused you, but it was not.  I couldn’t let you go out of my life.  In this way, I reasoned, I could keep in touch with you for years.  When I stipulated that you were to write once a fortnight, I had no idea the letters would be anything but simple statements of your daily life.  You see, I forgot,” he smiled again, the charming, whimsical smile that seemed so much a part of him, “that you were Irish and could do nothing impersonally.

“Immediately after mother’s illness came the matter of the railroad, and”—­he hesitated—­“Dermott McDermott.  You see, Katrine, you had stirred something in my nature I never knew before-ambition!  That was part, but the desolation that followed your out-going made action necessary.  Well, the new railroad was to be constructed through the plantation, and I worked with all the energy I could to forget.  You see what you did for me, Katrine!  And at every turn, circumventing, obstructing, legislating against me, urging me on by mental friction, was Dermott McDermott.  Am I tiring you?” he asked, tenderly.

“No,” she answered.  “I am glad to know how it all was.  Over there in Paris, when I was alone, I often wondered.”

“The interest in my own railroad naturally led to interests in the two adjoining ones, and always, always, Katrine, there were those letters of yours urging me on by your divine belief in me.  That you loved me, thought of me, wished me well, prayed for me,—­a man has to be worse than I ever was to fail to be helped by that.  And your loyalty, the very selflessness of your love, your willingness to be hurt if it would help me—­Katrine,” he interrupted himself, “there were other women in my life, but, one by one, I measured them up to the standard of you, and they became nothing.  I remember once, at the club, they brought me two letters, one from you and one from another woman.  It was the one in which you wrote, ’I have not forgotten, I do not wish to forget.  I want to make of myself so great a woman that some day he may say, with pride, “Once that woman loved me."’ I disliked to know that your white letter had even touched the other one, and that night the man I hope to make of myself was born.  If there be any achievement in my life that is worth while, if I ever count for anything in the world’s work, it is you who have done it, you and the letters which you blame me so much for permitting you to write.”

She turned toward him, her face flushed and divinely illumined, anger forgotten.  “You mean it?” she said.