’I wish, then, to put aside all thoughts of how this opportunity came to me, and to ask you if you are willing to be my wife.

’Though I have never written a word of love, my love is unchanged.  The passionate hope of three years ago still rules my life.  Is your love strong enough to enable you to disregard all hindrances?  I cannot of course know whether, in your sight, dishonour still clings to me, or whether you understand me well enough to have forgiven and forgotten those hateful things in the past.  Is it yet too soon?  Do you wish me still to wait, still to prove myself?  Is your interest in the free man less than in the slave?  For my life has been one of slavery and exile—­exile, if you know what I mean by it, from the day of my birth.

’Dearest, grant me this great happiness!  We can live where we will.  I am not rich enough to promise all the comforts and refinements to which you are accustomed, but we should be safe from sordid anxieties.  We can travel; we can make a home in any European city.  It would be idle to speak of the projects and ambitions that fill my mind—­but surely I may do something worth doing, win some position among intellectual men of which you would not be ashamed.  You yourself urged chance, that I may know the joy of satisfied love!  I am past the me to hope that.  With you at my side—­Sidwell, grant me this age which is misled by vain fancies.  I have suffered unspeakably, longed for the calm strength, the pure, steady purpose which would result to me from a happy marriage.  There is no fatal divergence between our minds; did you not tell me that?  You said that if I had been truthful from the first, you might have loved me with no misgiving.  Forget the madness into which I was betrayed.  There is no soil upon my spirit.  I offer you love as noble as any man is capable of.  Think—­think well—­before replying to me; let your true self prevail.  You did love me, dearest.——­

Yours ever,
Godwin Peak.’

At first he wrote slowly, as though engaged on a literary composition, with erasions, insertions.  Facts once stated, he allowed himself to forget how Sidwell would most likely view them, and thereafter his pen hastened:  fervour inspired the last paragraph.  Sidwell’s image had become present to him, and exercised all—­or nearly all—­its old influence.

The letter must be copied, because of that laboured beginning.  Copying one’s own words is at all times a disenchanting drudgery, and when the end was reached Godwin signed his name with hasty contempt.  What answer could he expect to such an appeal?  How vast an improbability that Sidwell would consent to profit by the gift of Marcella Moxey!

Yet how otherwise could he write?  With what show of sincerity could he offer to refuse the bequest?  Nay, in that case he must not offer to do so, but simply state the fact that his refusal was beyond recall.  Logically, he had chosen the only course open to him, —­for to refuse independence was impossible.