o do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and be
lost forever--do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to see
it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton--you know him. He
is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the necessary
thing so far as the knowledge of the world is concerned. With him,
then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces to find
peace--forever.

"You? ... Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not fixed,
and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then the
comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things right.
Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to you, the
kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of a great
love ended--yours and mine--would help you to give what you can give
with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the last!
Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing pulse of
being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to you in
the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no more: to
some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a great
deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over long
years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may be, in
what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the business of
life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have had my
share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and peace I
can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was not
accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to save you
from the worst. But it must be the one or the other.

"The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it
willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all that
makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and your
friend. I give you love and I give you friendship--whatever comes;
always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est.

"In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain;
but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in
life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow.

"Your Man,

"IAN.

"P.S.--I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow.

"IAN."

He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was
lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the
Tr