o
through life as comrades go, hand in hand, Hester and I; and great
happiness will be ours. And because of all this I say you have no right
to challenge my happiness, and vex my days, and feel for me as one dead.

My dear, bewildered Dane, come down out of the clouds. If I am wrong, I
have gone over the ground. Then do you go over that ground with me and
show where I am wrong. But do not pour out on me your romantic and
poetic spleen. Confine yourself to the Fact, man, to the irrefragable
Fact.

HERBERT.

Ah, your later letter has just arrived. I can only say that I
understand. But withal, I am pained that I am not nearer to you. These
intellectual phantasmagoria rise up like huge amorphous ghosts and hold
me from you. I cannot get through the mists and glooms to press your
hand and tell you how dear I hold you. Do, Dane, do let us cease from
this. Let us discuss no further. Let me care for Hester in my own way so
long as I do no sin and harm no one; and be you father to us, and bless
us who else must go unblessed. For Hester, also, is fatherless and
motherless, and you must be to her as you are to me.

HERBERT.

XII

FROM DANE KEMPTON TO HERBERT WACE

LONDON,
3A, QUEEN'S ROAD, CHELSEA, S.W.
February 10, 19--.

So we have got into an argument! I have been poring over your last two
or three letters, and they read like a set of briefs for a debate.
Doubtless mine have the same forensic quality. Our letters have become
rebuttals, pure and simple. This discovery gave my pen pause for a week.
It occurred to me that Walt Whitman must have meant didactic letters
too, when he said of the fretters of our little world, "They make me
sick talking of their duty to God." Yet friend should speak to friend,
should utter the word than which nothing is more sacred. "Let there be
light, and there was light"--a ripple of light, and a flash, then the
darkness broke and dispersed from the face of the waters. It was a
trumpet-call of words bringing drama into a nebulous creation. Let the
Word break up our night and let us not only grant, but avow the
conviction it brings us, no matter what the consequence. Let us worship
the irrefragable Fact.

You hold that marriage is an institution having for its purpose the
perpetuation of the species, and that respect and affection are
sufficient to bring two people into this most intimate possible
relation. You also hold that the business of the world, pressing hard
upon men, ma