It will probably be long before I see
you again--which I regret the less because it might pain you to meet me
before time has blunted the keen edge of your self-reproach. Absent or
present, however, I shall always be glad to know that you are well and
happy.
"Will you let me have a line in reply?
"Yours faithfully, MILES ERRINGTON."

The perusal of this letter brought Katherine the infinite relief of
tears. How good and generous he was! How heartily she admired him! How
gladly she confessed her own inferiority to him! Forgiven by him, she
could face life again with a sort of humble courage. But oh! it would
be impossible to meet his eyes. No; years would not suffice to blunt the
keen self-reproach which the thought of him must always call up--the
shame, the pride, the dread, the tender gratitude. Long and passionately
she wept before she could recover sufficiently to write him the reply he
asked. Then it seemed to her that the bitterness and cruel remorse had
been melted and washed away by these warm grateful tears. He forgave
her, and she could endure the pressure of her shameful secret more
easily in future. At last she took her pen, and feeling that the lines
she was about to trace would be a final farewell, wrote:

"My words must be few, for none I can find will express my sense of the
service _yours_ have done me. I accept your gift. I will try and follow
your advice. Shall the day ever come when you will honor me by accepting
part of what is your own? Thank you for your kind suggestion not to meet
me; it would be more than I could bear. Yours, KATHERINE."

Then with deepest regret she tore up his precious letter into tiny
morsels, and striking a match, consumed them. It would not do to incur
the possibility of such a letter being read by any third pair of eyes.
Moreover, she was careful to post her reply herself. And so, as
Errington said, that page of her story was blotted out, at least, from
the exterior world, but to her own mind it would be ever present: round
this crisis her deepest, most painful, ay, and sweetest memories would
cling. It was past, however, and she must take up her life again.

She felt something of the weakness, the softness, which convalescents
experience when first they begin to go about after a long illness, the
dreamy, quiet pleasure of coming back to life. The boys continued to be
her deepest interest. So time went on, and no one seemed