ve
created out of paper and ink. What you don't realise is how tiny a
difference between the real and the imaginary might turn that love to
disillusion. I'm honest in my letters; I don't pretend; Dorothea has no
doubt told you my faults as well as my virtues; my photographs are not
flattered; because I am young, and healthy, and alert, I am
better-looking in real life, yet if I walked into your room at this
moment looking my utmost best, you might still feel a shock of
disappointment! You might acknowledge that this woman was handsomer,
finer, in every way more personable than you had imagined, but that
would not soothe the disappointment. She had made unto yourself a
dream, and she was not your dream!

"Such a little thing can do it,--a little inconsequent thing, a tiny
personal peculiarity, a trick of manner, an expression, a _look_. It's
not a question of whether it is beautiful and admirable in itself; it is
a question of _attraction_, the indefinable, all-important attraction
about which there can be no reasoning, no appeal.

"We discussed it before--do you remember? I told you there was every
conceivable reason why I _should_ have loved one man who wanted me, but
there it was,--impossible! and nothing could alter it.

"If we had met in the ordinary way, as strangers, we should have been
able to test the presence or absence of this attraction in a simple,
natural fashion,--now, the realisation of its failure on either side
must bring with it misery and embarrassment.

"Honestly, I can't answer for myself. I _do_ like you! There have been
times--my loneliest times--when I have almost _loved_ Jim Blair,--the
Jim Blair of my dreams, but how am I to know that he is anything like
you? The face which looks at me from beneath the white topee in the
various groups which Dorothea has sent is vague enough to lend itself to
mental adaptation, the real one may be a very different thing!

"If I could see you for even five minutes, face to face, I could tell if
it were _possible_; but as things are, I can't, and I dare not cross the
world on the chance. I must find a niche at home, and work hard, and
try to be of some use in the world. Perhaps some day, say on your next
furlough, we may meet, if you still wish it, but in the meantime it
would be better not to write. After what you have said, I should feel
it unfair. The best thing you can do is to forget.

"Don't think me unkind. It seems brutal to write so c