“Mother wrote that you were about to marry Miss Hamilton.  Letters from home brought her the news, which she thinks is true.  Oh, Guy, it is not, it cannot be true!  You must not go quite away from me now just as I am coming back to you.  For, Guy, I am—­or rather, I have come, and a great love, such as I never felt before, fills me full almost to bursting.  I always liked you, Guy; but when we were married I did not know what it was to love—­to feel my pulses quicken as they do just now at thought of you.  If I had, how happy I could have made you, but I was a silly little girl, and married life was distasteful to me, and I was willing to be free, though always, way down in my heart, was something which protested against it, and if you knew just how I was influenced and led on insensibly to assent, you would not blame me so much.  The word divorce had an ugly sound to me, and I did not like it, and I have always felt as if bound to you just the same.  It would not be right for me to marry Tom, even if I wanted to, which I do not.  I am yours, Guy—­only yours, and all these years I have studied and improved for your sake, without any fixed idea, perhaps, as to what I expected or hoped.  But when Tom spoke the last time it came to me suddenly what I was keeping myself for, and, just as a great body of water, when freed from its prison walls, rolls rapidly down a green meadow, so did a mighty love for you take possession of me and permeate my whole being until every nerve quivered for joy, and when Tom was gone I went away alone and cried more for my new happiness, I am afraid, than for him, poor fellow.  And yet I pitied him, too; as I could not stay in Berlin after that I came away to earn money enough to take me back to you.  For I am coming, or I was before I heard that dreadful news which I cannot believe.

“Is it true, Guy?  Write and tell me it is not, and that you love me still and want me back, or, if it in part is true, and you are engaged to Julia, show her this letter and ask her to give you up, even if it is the very day before the wedding—­for you are mine, and, sometimes, when the children are troublesome, and I am so tired and sorry and homesick, I have such a longing for a sight of your dear face, and think if I could only lay my aching head in your lap once more I should never know pain or weariness again.

“Try me, Guy.  I will be so good and loving and make you so happy—­and your sister, too—­I was a bother to her once.  I’ll be a comfort now.  Tell her so, please; tell her to bid me come.  Say the word yourself, and, almost before you know it, I’ll be there.

“Truly, lovingly, waitingly, your wife,
Daisy.

“P.S.—­To make sure of this letter’s safety I shall send it to New York by a friend, who will mail it to you.

“Again, lovingly. 
Daisy Thornton.”

This was Daisy’s letter which Guy read with such a pang in his heart as he had never known before, even when he was smarting the worst from wounded love and disappointed hopes.  Then he had said to himself, “I can never suffer again as I am suffering now,” and now, alas, he felt how little he knew of that pain which rends the heart and takes the breath away.