He was very sick and his heart was very heavy in him.  He was very tired and all the world was very dreary to him, and he knew very well now at last, he was really feeling.  He knew it now from the way it hurt him.  He knew very well that now at last he was beginning to really have understanding.  The next day he had arranged to spend, long and happy, all alone in the spring fields with Melanctha, wandering.  He wrote her a note and said he could not go, he had a sick patient and would have to stay home with him.  For three days after, he made no sign to Melanctha.  He was very sick all these days, and his heart was very heavy in him, and he knew very well that now at last he had learned what it was to have deep feeling.

At last one day he got a letter from Melanctha.  “I certainly don’t rightly understand what you are doing now to me Jeff Campbell,” wrote Melanctha Herbert.  “I certainly don’t rightly understand Jeff Campbell why you ain’t all these days been near me, but I certainly do suppose it’s just another one of the queer kind of ways you have to be good, and repenting of yourself all of a sudden.  I certainly don’t say to you Jeff Campbell I admire very much the way you take to be good Jeff Campbell.  I am sorry Dr. Campbell, but I certainly am afraid I can’t stand it no more from you the way you have been just acting.  I certainly can’t stand it any more the way you act when you have been as if you thought I was always good enough for anybody to have with them, and then you act as if I was a bad one and you always just despise me.  I certainly am afraid Dr. Campbell I can’t stand it any more like that.  I certainly can’t stand it any more the way you are always changing.  I certainly am afraid Dr. Campbell you ain’t man enough to deserve to have anybody care so much to be always with you.  I certainly am awful afraid Dr. Campbell I don’t ever any more want to really see you.  Good-by Dr. Campbell I wish you always to be real happy.”

Jeff Campbell sat in his room, very quiet, a long time, after he got through reading this letter.  He sat very still and first he was very angry.  As if he, too, did not know very badly what it was to suffer keenly.  As if he had not been very strong to stay with Melanctha when he never knew what it was that she really wanted.  He knew he was very right to be angry, he knew he really had not been a coward.  He knew Melanctha had done many things it was very hard for him to forgive her.  He knew very well he had done his best to be kind, and to trust her, and to be loyal to her, and now;—­and then Jeff suddenly remembered how one night Melanctha had been so strong to suffer, and he felt come back to him the sweetness in her, and then Jeff knew that really, he always forgave her, and that really, it all was that he was so sorry he had hurt her, and he wanted to go straight away and be a comfort to her.  Jeff knew very well, that what Jane Harden had told him about Melanctha and her bad ways, had been a true story, and yet he wanted very badly to be with Melanctha.  Perhaps she could teach him to really understand it better.  Perhaps she could teach him how it could be all true, and yet how he could be right to believe in her and to trust her.