“That peace we may have in another way:  that I should go forever, now, before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, binding the cold cadre to the living pain.  To go now, with something accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and be lost forever—­do you not understand?  Face it, Jasmine, and try to see it in its true light....  I have a friend, John Caxton—­you know him.  He is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the necessary thing so far as the knowledge of the world is concerned.  With him, then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces to find peace—­forever.

“You? . . .  Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not fixed, and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then the comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things right.  Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to you, the kindest, and that which has in it most love.  The knowledge of a great love ended—­yours and mine—­would help you to give what you can give with fuller soul.  And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the last!  Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing pulse of being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to you in the scheme of things.  Destiny gives us in life so much and no more:  to some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a great deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over long years.  One’s share small it must be, but one’s share!  And it may be, in what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the business of life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have had my share....  And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and peace I can have yonder in the snows.  No one would guess that it was not accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to save you from the worst.  But it must be the one or the other.

“The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it willingly.  It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all that makes you what you are.  Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and your friend.  I give you love and I give you friendship—­whatever comes; always that, always friendship.  Tempus fugit sed amicitia est.

“In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in life, in death....  Good-night....  Good-morrow.

“Your Man,

“Ian.

“P.S.—­I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow.

“Ian.”

He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post.  When he had put the letter inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one carrying the mark of the Club.  By accident he had brought it with the letters written there.  He hesitated a moment, then refrained from opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and posted all his letters.