“You want me to write once that I love you”—­that is the way it began.

The woman who read dropped it suddenly as if it had burned her.  Was it possible?  Her light-hearted boy, whose short life she had been so sure had held nothing but a boy’s, almost a child’s, joys and sorrows!  The other affair was surprise enough, and a sad surprise, yet after all it had not touched him deeply, she felt certain of that; but this was another question.  She knew instinctively that if love had grown from such a solid foundation as this sweet and happy and reasonable friendship with this girl, whose warm heart and deep soul shone through her clear and simple words, it would be a different love from anything that other poor, flimsy child could inspire.  “L’amitie, c’est l’amour sans ailes.”  But sometimes when men and women have let the quiet, safe god Friendship fold his arms gently around them, he spreads suddenly a pair of sinning wings and carries them off—­to heaven—­wherever he wills it, and only then they see that he is not Friendship, but Love.

She picked up the letter again and read on: 

“You want me to write once that I love you, so that you may read it with your eyes, if you may not hear it with your ears.  Is that it—­is that what you want, dear?  Which question is a foolish sort of way for me to waste several drops of ink, considering that your letter is open before me.  And your picture just back of it, your brown eyes looking over the edge so eagerly, so actually alive that it seems very foolish to be making signs to you on paper at all.  How much simpler just to say half a word and then—­then!  Only we two can fill up that dash, but we can fill it full, can’t we?  However, I’m not doing what you want, and—­will you not tell yourself, if I tell you something?  To do what you want is just the one thing on earth I like most to do.  I think you have magnetized me into a jelly-fish, for at times I seem to have no will at all.  I believe if you asked me to do the Chinese kotow, and bend to the earth before you, I’d secretly be dying to do it.  But I wouldn’t, you know, I promise you that.  I give you credit for liking a live woman, with a will of her own, better than a jelly-fish.  And anyway I wouldn’t—­if you liked me for it or not—­so you see it’s no use urging me.  And still I haven’t done what you want—­what was it now?  Oh, to tell you that—­but the words frighten me, they are so big.  That I—­I—­I—­love you.  Is it that?  I haven’t said it yet, remember.  I’m only asking a question.  Do you know I have an objection to sitting here in cold blood and writing that down in cold ink?  If it were only a little dark now, and your shoulder—­and I could hide my head—­you can’t get off for a minute?  Ah, I am scribbling along light-heartedly, when all the time the sword of Damocles is hanging over us both, when my next letter may have to be good-by for always.  If that fate comes you will find me steady to stand by you, to help you.  I will say