oldly, especially
to-day, when I have just received a letter from Captain Bedford in
Egypt, and with it the most wonderful old brass tray--quite the finest
specimen of its kind that I have seen. He explains that it is your
commission, and sends me quite a genealogical tree of its history. From
his letter he sounds a charming man. He says he returns in March. If I
had been coming out, we might have travelled by the same boat...

"Oh, Jim, I _wish_ I could come--I wish I could! It's hard work looking
on, and feeling eternally number three. Do you think I don't want to
love too, and to be loved? Do you think it is easy to say `no,' and
throw away the chance? If only I could think it right! It is not pride
which is hindering me, truly it isn't, it is more like cowardice. We
have defied convention, and as a result have created an impossible
situation, and I shrink from the probable pain and disillusion of a
meeting in the flesh. Your letters have meant a great deal to me; I
don't know how I should have come through the last few months without
them. For my own sake I should not regret the episode, but it has been
hard on you. At the bottom of my heart I guessed all along that it
would lead to this. I _pretended_ that I did not, and deliberately shut
my eyes, and now I must pay up. I care for you too much to run any more
risks. I won't write again, and please don't answer this. You will
hear of my doings through Dorothea, and I shall always care to hear
about you; so it is not like saying good-bye.

"Don't be angry with me, I'm very miserable!

"Katrine."

"Lebong, _December 10, 19--_.

"Katrine,

"I'm not angry, dear girl--but you've got to come! Every word that you
write only makes me the more fixed in my determination. I can
understand your shyness and your pride, but I'm hanged if I can
understand all this business about disillusion and humiliation. If you
find on investigation that I'm not the man for you, I shall regret it,
but I shall feel no humiliation. Why should I? The fact that I do not
please your taste, makes me no less a man, nor worthy of esteem. If--by
a strength of imagination--I were disappointed in you, the situation
would, I admit, be more charged, but being `only a man,' I emphatically
deny your assertion that the sentiment which you have evoked could be
evaporated by any outward feature or trait. My dream woman is very
dear, but, have no delusions on the point--she is not p