last time.

Your sympathetic friend,
E. CASPIAN.

XI

PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND

_Huntersford._

_My Simple Life Room. Unearthly Hour; but leading Hen
has just laid my breakfast Egg._

HAIL, FATHER CONFESSOR!

When you read what I have to say, if you weren't a model of (several, if
not) all the virtues, you'd say, "I told you so!" But you're a cynic at
head, not at heart, and you allow yourself to be sarcastic only in the
privacy of your own brain-pan as a rule.

I warn you I want to gush, and having stripped myself of all alleged
friends and acquaintances (except you) as a tree strips itself of leaves
in winter, I've no one else to gush to.

Perhaps it's but fair to myself, though, to explain that it doesn't feel
like "gush" to me. I use the word only because I'm a coward and fear to
have you think me a sentimental idiot. I'm trying to let myself down,
you see, as easily as I can!

It's a queer thing (I don't know whether a punishment or an omen of
blessing) that our talk when you prophesied my repentance took place on
the same road I travelled last night in a car of the same make and same
power. The same moon which gazed coldly on you and me, and maybe
eavesdropped, beamed sympathetically on me and some one else a few
hours ago, and if it had sense, witnessed your poetic justification.

Now I ask for your advice again, and this time--if it's anything like
what I want--I'll take it.

But I find it isn't as easy to get on with my confession as I thought it
would be. I'm nervously inclined to put the cart before the horse. Or,
I'm hanged if I'm sure which is the cart and which the horse!

The spell of the moon is upon me still. I feel myself two men--the man
who argued you down; the man who wishes you had downed him. I wonder if
you remember that night--my last on this side of the water--as well as I
do? Can you see us two, after our secret visit to _the_ house, getting
into the car? The moon a boat tossing a silver prow high into the blue,
and the stars small bright points like sequins flung in the air at an
Eastern wedding. Away we go, slipping through Cold Spring Harbor; trees
pouring past the car like smoke, hills olive gray in the moonshine; old
white houses dreaming of their stately past; young houses wide awake and
playing bridge o