alter my love any more than I could stop my heart from beating.  How could you, could you suggest such a thing!  I know that you really love me just as much as I love you, or I should not open my heart like this.  I should be too proud to give myself away.  But I feel that pride is out of place when any mistake or misunderstanding may mean lifelong misery to both of us.  I would only say good-bye if I thought your love had changed or grown less.  But I know that it has not.  O my darling, if you only knew what terrible agony the very thought of parting is, you would never have let such an idea even for an instant, on any pretext, enter your mind.  The very possibility is too awful to think of.  When I read your letter just now up in my room, I nearly fainted.  I can’t write.  O Frank, don’t take my love away from me.  I can’t bear it.  Oh no, it is my everything.  If I could only see you now, I know that you would kiss these heart-burning tears away.  I feel so lonely and tired.  I cannot follow all your letter.  I only know that you talked of parting, and that I am weary and miserable.

Maude.

(Copy of telegram)
From Frank Crosse, to Miss Maude Selby,
The Laurels, St. Albans
Coming up eight-fifteen, arrive midnight.

June 10th.

How good of you, dear old boy, to come racing across two counties at a minute’s notice, simply in order to console me and clear away my misunderstandings.  Of course it was most ridiculous of me to take your letter so much to heart, but when I read any suggestion about our parting, it upset me so dreadfully, that I was really incapable of reasoning about anything else.  Just that one word part seemed to be written in letters of fire right across the page, to the exclusion of everything else.  So then I wrote an absurd letter to my boy, and the dear came scampering right across the South of England, and arrived at midnight in the most demoralised state.  It was just sweet of you to come, dear, and I shall never forget it.

I am so sorry that I have been so foolish, but you must confess, sir, that you have been just a little bit foolish also.  The idea of supposing that when I love a man my love can be affected by the size of his house or the amount of his income.  It makes me smile to think of it.  Do you suppose a woman’s happiness is affected by whether she has a breakfast-room, or a billiard-board, or a collie dog, or any of the other luxuries which you enumerated?  But these things are all the merest trimmings of life.  They are not the essentials.  You and your love are the essentials.  Some one who will love me with all his heart.  Some one whom I can love with all my heart.  Oh the difference it makes in life!  How it changes everything!  It glorifies and beautifies everything.  I always felt that I was capable of a great love—­and now I have it.