how feeble you are, or tie his poker round
his neck in a neat bow, and refuse to undo it
until he apologizes. I'm sure you could! '_Ill_'
indeed! If you can't have a little fit, on the
rare occasions when you see a snake, without fools
saying you are ill or dotty or something, it is a
pity! Anyhow there is one small woman who
understands, and if she can't marry you she can at
any rate be your inseparable pal--and if the
Piffling Little World likes to talk scandal, in
spite of Auntie Yvette's presence--why it will be
amusing. Cable, Darling! I am just bursting
with excitement and joy--and fear (that something
may go wrong at the last moment). If it saved a
single day I should start for Motipur myself at
once. If we passed in mid-ocean I should jump
overboard and swim to your ship. Then you'd do the
same, and we should 'get left,' and look silly....
Oh, what nonsense I am talking--but I don't think
I shall talk anything else again--for sheer joy!

"You can't write me a lot of bosh _now_ about
'spoiling my life' and how you'd be ten times more
miserable if I were your wife. Fancy--a soldier
to-day and a 'landed proprietor' to-morrow! How I
wish you were a _landed_ traveller, and were in
the train from Plymouth--no, from Dover and
London, because of course you'd come the quickest
way. Did my cable surprise you very much?

"I enclose fifty ten-pound notes, as I suppose
they will be quicker and easier for you to cash
than those 'draft' things, and they'll be quite
safe in the insured packet. Send a cable at once,
Darling. If you don't I shall imagine awful things
and perhaps die of a broken heart or some other
silly trifle.

"Mind then:--Cable to-day; Start to-morrow; Get
here in a fortnight--and keep a beady eye open at
Port Said and Brindisi and places--in case there
has been time for me to get there. Au revoir.
Darling Dam,

"Your

"LUCILLE.

"Three cheers! And a million more!"

* * * * *

Yes, a long letter, but he could almost say it backwards. He couldn't
be anything like mad while he could do that?... How had she received
his answer--in which he tried to show her the impossibility of any
decent man compromising a girl in the way she proposed in her sweet
innocence and ignorance. Of course _he_, a half-mad, epileptic,
fiend-ridden monomaniac--nay, dangerous lunatic,--could not _marry_.