Steve, I have asked him to spend July with us. He seemed quite surprised and a little disconcerted by the invitation—just as he seemed to be when I asked him to do the pool and fountain.
He said he would like to come if he could arrange it—whatever that may mean. So it was left that way.
It will be wonderful to see you here, moving in the garden, standing out yonder on the lawn!—Steve, herself, in her own actual and matchless person!—Steve in the flesh, here under the green old trees of Runner’s Rest.... Sometimes when I am thinking of you—and I think of practically nothing else!—I seem to see you as you were when last here—a girl in ribbons and white, dancing over the lawn with her chestnut hair flying; or down by the river at the foot of the lawn, wading bare-legged, fussing and poking about among the stones; or lying full-length on the grass under the trees, reading "Quentin Durward"—do you remember? And I used to take you trout-fishing to that mysterious Dunbar Brook up in the forest, where the rush of ice-cold waters and the spray clouding the huge round bowlders always awed you and made you the slightest bit uneasy.
And do you remember the brown pools behind those bowlders, where you cautiously dropped your line; and the sudden scurry of a black shadow in the pool—the swift tug, the jerk and spatter as you flung a speckled trout skyward in mingled joy and consternation?
Runner’s Rest has not changed. House and barns need paint; the garden requires your soft white hands to caress it into charming discipline; the house needs you; the lawns are empty without you; the noise of the river rippling on the shoals sounds lonely. The whole place needs you, Steve, to make it logical. And so do I. Because all this has no meaning unless the soul of it shows through.
When I am perplexed, restless, impatient, unhappy, I try to remember that you have given me a bit of your heart; that you realize you have mine entire—every atom of my love, my devotion.... There must be some way for us.... I don’t know what way, because you have thought it necessary to leave me blind. But I shall never give you up—unless you find that you care more for another man.
And now to answer what you have said concerning you and me. I suppose I ought to touch what is, theoretically, another man’s. Yet, you do not belong to him. And you have begun to fall a little in love with me, haven’t you? And in this incomprehensible pact it was agreed that you retain your liberty until you came to final decision within two years.