t to write.
You need not give him any address, but you must let him know you're
well, and why you intend to remain abroad. It is by relieving his mind
on these subjects that you'll save yourself from the vexation of his
hunting you up here.... Come, now," he said, noticing the agonised and
bewildered look on Evelyn's face, "this is the only disagreeable hour in
the day--you must put up with it. Here is the pen. Now write--

"'My DEAR FATHER,--I should be happy in Paris, very happy, if it were
not for the knowledge of the grief that my flight must have occasioned
you. Of course I have acted very wrongly, very wickedly--'"

"But," said Evelyn, "you told me I was acting rightly, that to do
otherwise would be madness."

"Yes, and I only told you the truth. But in writing to your father you
must adopt the conventional tone. There's no use in trying to persuade
your father you did right.... I don't know, though. Scratch out 'I have
acted wrongly and very wickedly,' and write--

"'I will not ask you to think that I have acted otherwise than wrongly,
for, of course, as a father you can hold no other opinion, but being
also a clever man, an artist, you will perhaps be inclined to admit that
my wrong-doing is not so irreparable a wrong-doing as it might have been
in other and easily imagined circumstances.'" Full stop.

"You've got that--'so irreparable a wrong-doing as it might have been in
other and easily imagined circumstances'?"

"Yes."

"'Father dear, you know that if I had remained in Dulwich my voice would
have been wasted, not through my fault or yours, but through the fault
of circumstances.'

"You have got circumstances a few lines higher up, so put 'through the
fault of fate.'"

"Father will never believe that I wrote this letter."

"That doesn't matter--the truth is the truth from whoever it comes."

"'We should have gone on deceiving ourselves, or trying to deceive
ourselves, hoping as soon as the concerts paid that I should go abroad
with a proper chaperon. You know, father dear, how we used to talk, both
knowing well that no such thing could be. The years would have slipped
by, and at five-and-thirty, when it would have been too late, I should
have found myself exactly where I was when mother died. You would have
reproached yourself, you would have suffered remorse, we should have
both been miserable; whereas now I hope that we shall both be happy. You
will bring about a revival of Palestrina, and I s