o another's destiny was
begun. It is always more important to love than to be loved. I wish it
had been vouchsafed me to be by when your spirit of a sudden grew
willing to bestow itself without question or let or hope of return, when
the self broke up and you grew fain to beat out your strength in praise
and service for the woman who was soaring high in the blue wastes. You
have known her long, and you must have been hers long, yet no word of
her and of your love reached me. It was not kind to be silent.

Barbara spoke yesterday of your fastidiousness, and we told each other
that you had gained a triumph of happiness in your love, for you are not
of those who cheat themselves. You choose rigorously, straining for the
heart of the end as do all rigorists who are also hedonists. Because we
are in possession of this bit of data as to your temperamental cosmos we
can congratulate you with the more abandon. Oh, Herbert, do you know
that this is a rampant spring, and that on leaving Barbara I tramped
out of the confines into the green, happier, it almost seems, than I
have ever been? Do you know that because you love a woman and she loves
you, and that because you are swept along by certain forces, that I am
happy and feel myself in sight of my portion of immortality on earth,
far more than because of my books, dear lad, far more?

I wish I could fly England and get to you. Should I have a shade less of
you than formerly, if we were together now? From your too much green of
wealth, a barrenness of friendship? It does not matter; what is her gain
cannot be my loss. One power is mine,--without hindrance, in freedom and
in right, to say to Ellen's son, "Godspeed!" to place Hester Stebbins's
hand in his, and bid them forth to the sunrise, into the glory of day!

Ever your devoted father,
DANE KEMPTON.

II

FROM HERBERT WACE TO DANE KEMPTON

THE RIDGE,
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.
September 3, 19--.

Here I am, back in the old quarters once more, with the old afternoon
climb across the campus and up into the sky, up to the old rooms, the
old books, and the old view. You poor fog-begirt Dane Kempton, could you
but have lounged with me on the window couch, an hour past, and watched
the light pass out of the day through the Golden Gate and the night
creep over the Berkeley Hills and down out of the east! Why should you
linger on there in London town! We grow away from each other, it
seems--you with your wonder-singing, I w