Dear James: 

I am going away.  I am going to leave Portchester for several months.  I am going to see the world.  I did not tell you this last night for fear of weakening under your entreaties, or should I say commands?  Lately I have felt myself weakening more than once, and I want to know what it means.  Absence will teach me, absence and the sight of new faces.  Do you quarrel with this necessity?  Do you think I should know my mind without any such test?  Alas!  James, it is not a simple mind and it baffles me at times.  Let us then give it a chance.  If the glow and glamour of elegant city life can make me forget certain snatches of talk at our old gate, or that night when you drew my hand through your arm and softly kissed my fingertips, then I am no mate for you, whose love, however critical, has never wavered, but has made itself felt, even in rebuke, as the strongest, sweetest thing that has entered my turbulent life.  Because I would be worthy of you, I submit to a separation which will either be a permanent one or the last that will ever take place between you and me.  John will not bear this as well as you, yet he does not love me as well, possibly because to him I am simply a superior being, while to you I am a loving but imperfect woman who wishes to do right but can only do so under the highest guidance.

Dear John: 

I feel that I owe you a letter because you have been so patient.  You may show it to James if you like, but I mean it for you as an old and dear friend who will one day dance at my wedding.

I am living in a whirl of enjoyment.  I am seeing and tasting of pleasures I have only dreamed about till now.  From a farmhouse kitchen to Mrs. Andrews’s drawing-room is a lively change for a girl who loves dress and show only less than daily intercourse with famous men and brilliant women.  But I am bearing it nobly and have developed tastes I did not know I possessed; expensive tastes, John, which I fear may unfit me for the humble life of a Portchester matron.  Can you imagine me dressed in rich brocade, sitting in the midst of Washington’s choicest citizens and exchanging sallies with senators and judges?  You may find it hard, yet so it is, and no one seems to think I am out of place, nor do I feel so, only—­do not tell James—­there are movements in my heart at times which make me shut my eyes when the lights are brightest, and dream, if but for an instant, of home and the tumble-down gateway where I have so often leaned when someone (you know who it is now, John, and I shall not hurt you too deeply by mentioning him) was saying good-night and calling down the blessings of Heaven upon a head not worthy to receive them.

Does this argue my speedy return?  Perhaps.  Yet I do not know.  There are fond hearts here also, and a life in this country’s centre would be a great life for me if only I could forget the touch of a certain restraining hand which has great power over me even as a memory.  For the sake of that touch shall I give up the grandeur and charm of this broad life?  Answer, John.  You know him and me well enough now to say.