These are not the things which steep my soul in joy ineffable!
I know that I possess the love of Grace Harding!
She has not told me; it is not necessary that she shall say the words to confirm the truth which has come to me. I know that she loves me; is not that enough?
Chilvers passed while I was sitting here and caught me smiling. I was reading the sixteenth entry in this diary.
"What are you grinning at, Smith?" he demanded.
I did not tell him. I had been reading my soliloquy to the effect that the knowledge of love is conveyed without verbal expression between those who love. I had written: "The man who fails to avail himself of this silent but eloquent language, and who stupidly assaults a woman with an open avowal of an alleged love deserves to be coldly rejected."
Then I wrote that these voiceless messages to the one you love would be considered and finally answered, and that there might come a day "when over the throbbing unseen wire there comes a telepagram sounding the letters 'Y-E-S,' then proceed with the sweet formality of a verbal confession and avowal of your love, and you will not be disappointed."
I have received that glorious message! Grace Harding has told me that she loves me!
The message was transmitted from the depths of her beautiful eyes! It has been confirmed by the gentle pressure of her hand as it rested on my arm! It has been echoed in the accents of her sweet voice! I have read it in the blush which mantles her check as I draw near, and I know it from a thousand little tokens which my heart understands and which my feeble words cannot express.
I may as well finish the sentence which ends brokenly in the preceding entry. "I am _an ass_."
Three weeks have passed since I finished that entry with the most appropriate words, "I am." They fittingly express the consummate egoism with which I was then afflicted. I have recovered--partially, at least.
I am--there goes that "I am" again--I am on the "Oceanic" pointed for London. Unless we sink--and I care little whether we do or not--I should be in that city inside of forty-eight hours.
In looking over my luggage I found this diary. I gave it to my room steward and told him to throw it overboard. Then it occurred to me that it would be my luck that it would be picked up and published as the mental meanderings of an idiot, so I called him back and took it away from him.