er come to me; and yet I wish I had
not read it. I'm not free to make you any promise. I'm not free to
correspond with you any more--now. I've been trying to find a way
to tell you so indirectly, but your letter makes it necessary for
me to do so directly.

The rest of the letter was an attempt to soften the blow, but it fell
upon him very hard.

The possibility which he had always feared had become a fact, the hope
which he had kept in the obscure processes of his thought and which had
filled a vital place in his action, dropped out and left him
purposeless. This hope of somehow, someway having her near to him had
been the mainspring of his action and it could not be withdrawn without
leaving him disabled.

He returned to the letter again, and again studying each word, each
mark. He saw in it her acceptance of some other--probably Birdsell.

Then he saw that she had withdrawn the privilege--the blessed
privilege--of writing to her. She was determined to go out of his life
completely. At times as he imagined this strongly, his throat swelled
till he could hardly breathe. He would have cried if nature had not
denied him that relief.

He saw how baseless his hope had been, and he exonerated her from all
blame. She had been kind and helpful till he spoiled it all by a fool's
presumption. He had always exaggerated her social position and her
attainments, but in the depths of his self-abasement and despair every
kindness she had done him and every letter she had written took on a
new significance. On every one he saw her warnings. Every meeting he
had ever had with her he now went over and over with the strange
pleasure one takes in bruising an aching limb.

She had never been other than reserved, impersonal in his presence. She
had shown him again and again that her intimate life was not for him to
know. He remembered now the peculiar look of perfect understanding
which flashed between Birdsell and Ida, which troubled him at the time,
but which his cursed egotism had brushed away as of no significance.

His speech lay there on the table, it was waste paper now. He had no
one left to address it to. His utter loneliness came back to him. His
mind went back over the line of his life till it came again into the
little opening in the Wisconsin woods where the pines wept or snarled
ceaselessly--till his mother died in the moan and the snarl and shadow
of them. His heart went out to her as never before sinc