“When, on this very spot where we last parted, you told me that you loved her, I swear to you, if need be, that I rejoiced.  I was glad that she would have you to make the future smooth for her.  Later I grew to envy you.  It was for your safety, as well as mine and hers, that I decided to see neither of you again until she had been some time your wife.  No word of love, no confidence of any kind, had ever passed between us.  When I wrote you that I should not be here to see you married, and when not even your reproaches could move me, I had already engaged my passage on a sailing ship bound for the Azores.  I had planned to put a long uncertain voyage between you and any possibility that I might mar your chances for happiness, for the nearer the day came, the more—­in spite of myself—­I resented it!

“My good intentions were thwarted by—­Fate.

“For some reason, forgotten and unimportant, the Captain deferred lifting anchor for a whole week.  I called myself unpretty names for thinking that I could not even see her without danger.  I despised myself for the judgment that accused me of being such a scamp as to think I would do anything to rob her of the protection and safety you could give her, and I could not, and an egoist for being possessed with the idea that I could if I would.

“Suddenly I felt quite sure of myself.

“Yet I had meant to see her without being seen, when I hurried so unexpectedly down here on your wedding night.  I fancied I only longed to see what a lovely bride she would make—­she who as a child, a girl, a maiden, had been in your eyes the most exquisite creature you had ever known; she whom I had avoided for years, because I, of all men, could least afford to take a place in her life!  I longed to see those eyes, still so pure, under her bridal veil.

“I came in secret!  I saw her—­and all prudence fled out of me, leaving but one instinct.

“Was it my fault that, alone, she fled from the house?  That, with her veil thrown over her arm, she ran directly by me, like a sprite in the moonlight, to this spot?

“The rest you know.

“It is not you who need pity!

“You have the pain of an imperishable loyalty in your soul.  It is like a glory in your face, in spite of all you have suffered.  As I look at you, it seems but yesterday that all was well between us.

“I lost much in losing you.

“Nor am I sure that you were right to go!  But that was for your own nature to decide.  In your place I should have fought Fate, I expected you to do it.

“I loved her first, because she satisfied my eyes.  I loved her the more that she was denied to me!  Yet I knew always that this love was not in me what it was in you.  With me it was, like many other emotions of a similar sort—­a sentiment that would pass.  I tried to think otherwise.  But I had awakened her heart, and you, to whom the law had given her, were gone!