“You must allow me to act,” he wrote at last, “as I think best. Believe me, I’m saving myself from you. I don’t want to see you. I won’t. It could serve no purpose except to hurt us both, and what’s the use of that? I haven’t exactly changed in my feeling toward you. You know that well enough, I expect. There will never be anyone else to count. There never was anyone else that meant at all the same as you have meant (and I suppose, still mean) to me. It may seem strange to you when I say I care every bit as much as I ever have – possibly more. I confess it seems strange to me. Certainly I didn’t expect anything of the kind when we began. But something has gone dead in me, Joanna. I can’t go on. That’s what I realized on the journey to Edinburgh when I was so awfully tired. Quite suddenly, once and for all, I realized it. I can’t go on. And in this of ours, we must go on or make an end. Don’t you agree? As I see things now, it has been tug and tug between us this long time past – perhaps the whole time. If I’d had it in me I would have gone off with you long ago. You always wanted that, I know, and once or twice I have fancied that I could. But I know now that I never could have. It would only have been a sickening disaster for both of us if I had tried. Perhaps I was too old when you got me. You don’t know yet what that feels like and you ought to be thankful. Anyhow there it is. It has wanted courage for me to cut loose from you and stay behind. You must have the courage to cut loose from me and go on. I believe you can do this. But whatever you do, don’t make things ugly and regrettable at the end by asking the impossible of me. I’m sure I’ve done you no harm, and I hope I may have done you good. Let me alone, my dear, with my memories. Be sure a man never had sweeter ones. Be sure I wish you well, and am for ever grateful.

“Your old lover,
“LOUIS.”

If many a time, in his love-making, Joanna had been driven to make excuses to herself for her lover, in his withdrawal he rose far beyond any need of apology. If she indeed had it in her to go forward into a new, unimagined life, here in this letter would lie her dearest trophy from the old.

VI

During the futile weeks that followed, she even took to visiting fortune-tellers. It was a tribe that had never before caught her attention. But the days must be passed somehow.