"I must not worry you now, with tales of my own poor heart; but ever since I lost you, David; ever since our wedding-day evening, I have loved you, and longed for you, more, and more, and more. When you called me your wife on the gangway, it revealed to me, suddenly, what it really meant to be your wife.
"Oh, my Boy, my Darling, when I lose you, I shall be a widow indeed! But you must not let the thought of my sorrow disturb your last moments. Perhaps, when you reach the Land that is very far off, I shall feel you less far away than in Central Africa. Be near me, sometimes, if you can, David.
"I shall go on striving to offer my gifts; though the gold and the frankincense will be overwhelmed by the myrrh. But the Star we have followed together, will still lead me on. And perhaps it will guide me at last to the foot of the shining throne, where my Darling will sit in splendour. And I shall see his look call me to him, as it called in old St. Botolph's; and I shall pass up the aisle of glory, and hear him say: 'Come, my wife.' Then I shall kneel at his feet, and lay my head on his knees. Oh, David, David!
"Your own wife, who loves you and longs for you,
There was much she would have expressed otherwise; there were some things she would have left unsaid; but there was no time to rewrite her letter. So Diana let it go as it was; and it caught the evening mail.
But even so, David never saw it; for it arrived, alas, just twenty-four hours too late.
Once again it was Christmas-eve; but, in the midst of the strenuous life of a busy London hospital, Diana scarcely had leisure to realise the season, or to allow herself the private luxury of dwelling in thought upon the anniversaries which were upon her once more; the three important dates, coming round for the third time.
She had fled from a brooding leisure--a leisure in which she dared not await the news of David's death, or the coming of his farewell letter--and she had fled successfully.
The Sister of Saint Angela's ward, in the Hospital of the Holy Star, had no time for brooding, and very few moments in which to give a thought to herself or her own sorrows. The needs of others were too all-absorbing.
Diana, in the severe simplicity of her uncompromising uniform; Diana, with a stiffly starched white cap, almost concealing her coronet of soft golden hair, bore little outward resemblance to David's sweet Lady of Mystery, who had stood in an attitude of hesitancy at the far end of Brambledene church, on that winter's night two years before.