twelve hours. For twelve hours you've left me
here all alone. I don't know how I've lived. I don't know how I'm
going to get through the night and to-morrow. Only there won't be any
to-morrow. There'll never be anything more than periods of twelve
hours, until you come back: just from dawn to dark, and then from dark
to dawn, over and over again. Each period must be fought through as it
comes, with no thought about the others. I 'm beginning on the third.
The morning will bring the fourth.

Each one is like a lifetime--a birth and a death. And oh, my Prince, I
shall soon be very, very old. I don't dare look in the mirror
to-night, for fear of seeing how old I've grown since morning. I
remember a word they used on shipboard when the waves threw the big
propeller out of the water and the full power of the engines was wasted
on air. They called it "racing." It was bad for the ship to have this
energy go for nothing. It racked her and made her tremble and groan.
I've been racing ever since you went, churning the air to no purpose,
with a power that was meant to drive me ahead. I 'm right where I
started after it all.

Dearest heart of mine, I love you. Though I tremble away from those
words, I must put them down for once in black and white. Though I tear
them up into little pieces so small that no one can read them, I must
write them once. It is such a relief, here by myself, to be honest.
If you were here and I were honest, I 'd stand very straight and look
you fair in the eyes and tell you that over and over again. "I love
you, Monte," I would say. "I love you with all my heart and soul,
Monte," I would say. "Right or wrong, coward that I am or not, whether
it is good for you or not, I love you, Monte," I would say. And, if
you wished, I would let you kiss me. And, if you would let me, I would
kiss you on your dear tousled hair, on your forehead, on your eyes--

That is where I kissed Peter to-day. I will tell you here, as I would
tell you standing before you. I kissed Peter on his eyes, and I have
promised to kiss him again upon his eyes to-morrow--if to-morrow comes.
I did it because he said it would help him to see again. And if he
sees again--why, Monte, if he sees again, then he will see how absurd
it is that he should ask me to love him.

Blind as he is, he almost saw that to-day, when he made me promise to
try to stay by his side. With his eyes full open, then he will be able
to read m