a long letter, for we cannot be in under six
days, and in all that time there is nothing else I can do--nothing
else I would do, if I could. And yet it is so different. Perhaps I
am incoherent, and you will say, different from what? It is
different from what it used to be, before that thrice-blessed
afternoon in the Newport fog.

"The gray mist came down like a curtain, shutting off the past and
marking where the present begins. It seems to me that I never lived
before that moment, and yet those months were happy while they
lasted, so that it sometimes seemed as though no greater happiness
could be possible. How did it all happen, most blessed lady?

"The lazy, good-natured sea, that loves us well, washes up and
glances through my port-hole as I write, as if in answer to my
question. The sea knows how it happened, for he saw us, and bore
us, and heard all the tale; and even in Newport he was there,
hidden under the fog and listening, and he is rejoicing that those
who loved are now lovers. It is not hard to see how it happened.
They all worship you, every human being that comes near you falls
down and acknowledges you to be the queen. For they must. There is
no salvation from that, and it is meet and right that it should be
so. And I came, like the others, to do homage to the great queen,
and you deigned to raise me up and bid me stand beside you.

"You are my first allegiance and my first love. I thank Heaven that
I can say it honestly and truly, without fear of my conscience
pricking. You know too, for I have told you, how my boyhood and
manhood have been passed, and if there is anything you do not know
I will tell you hereafter, for I would always hate to feel that
there was anything about me you did not know--I could not feel it.
But then, say you, he should have told me what he was going to do
abroad. And so I have, dear lady; for though I have not explained
it all to you, I have placed all needful knowledge in safe hands,
where you can obtain it for the asking, if ever the least shadow of
doubt should cross your mind. Only I pray you, as suing a great
boon, not to doubt--that is all, for I would rather you did not
know yet.

"This letter is being written by degrees. I have not written all
this at once, for I find it as hard to expres