Chapter VIII: Part 8

"He spoke to me quite simply and frankly of his life. It was
wonderful to me then that he should speak of it as he did,
and still more wonderful that I should sit and listen to him
as I did. But I have often thought about it since, and have
long ceased to wonder at myself. There was an absolute
magnetism about Mr. Raffles which neither you nor I could
resist. He had the strength of personality which is a
different thing from strength of character; but when you meet
both kinds together, they carry the ordinary mortal off his
or her feet. You must not imagine you are the only one who
would have served and followed him as you did. When he told
me it was all a game to him, and the one game he knew that
was always exciting, always full of danger and of drama, I
could just then have found it in my heart to try the game
myself! Not that he treated me to any ingenious sophistries
or paradoxical perversities. It was just his natural charm
and humor, and a touch of sadness with it all, that appealed
to something deeper than one's reason and one's sense of
right. Glamour, I suppose, is the word. Yet there was far
more in him than that. There were depths, which called to
depths; and you will not misunderstand me when I say I think
it touched him that a woman should listen to him as I did,
and in such circumstances. I know that it touched me to think
of such a life so spent, and that I came to myself and
implored him to give it all up. I don't think I went on my
knees over it. But I am afraid I did cry; and that was the
end. He pretended not to notice anything, and then in an
instant he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred
horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me more than
all the rest. I remember that I wanted to shake hands at the
end. But Mr. Raffles only shook his head, and for one instant
his face was as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of
the time. Then he went as he had come, in his own dreadful
way, and not a soul in the house knew that he had been. And
even you were never told!

"I didn't mean to write all this about your own friend, whom
you knew so much better yourself, yet you see that even you
did not know how nobly he tried to undo the wrong he had done
you; and now I think I know why he kept it to himself. It is
fearfully late--or early--I seem to have been writing all
night--and I will explain the matter in the fewest words. I
promised Mr. Raffles that I would write to you, Harry, and
see you if I could. Well, I did write, and I did mean to see
you, but I never had an answer to what I wrote. It was only
one line, and I have long known you never received it. I
could not bring myself to write more, and even those few
words were merely slipped into one of the books which you had
given me. Years afterward these books, with my name in them,
must have been found in your rooms; at any rate they were
returned to me by somebody; and you could never have opened
them, for there was my line where I had left it. Of course
you had never seen it, and that was all my fault. But it was
too late to write again. Mr. Raffles was supposed to have
been drowned, and everything was known about you both. But I
still kept my own independent knowledge to myself; to this
day, no one else knows that you were one of the two in Palace
Gardens; and I still blame myself more than you may think for
nearly everything that has happened since.

"You said yesterday that your going to the war and getting
wounded wiped out nothing that had gone before. I hope you
are not growing morbid about the past. It is not for me to
condone it, and yet I know that Mr. Raffles was what he was
because he loved danger and adventure, and that you were what
you were because you loved Mr. Raffles. But, even admitting
it was all as bad as bad could be, he is dead, and you are
punished. The world forgives, if it does not forget. You are
young enough to live everything down. Your part in the war
will help you in more ways than one. You were always fond of
writing. You have now enough to write about for a literary
lifetime. You must make a new name for yourself. You must
Harry, and you will!

"I suppose you know that my aunt, Lady Melrose, died some
years ago? She was the best friend I had in the world, and it
is thanks to her that I am living my own life now in the one
way after my own heart. This is a new block of flats, one of
those where they do everything for you; and though mine is
tiny, it is more than all I shall ever want. One does just
exactly what one likes--and you must blame that habit for all
that is least conventional in what I have said. Yet I should
like you to understand why it is that I have said so much,
and, indeed, left nothing unsaid. It is because I want never
to have to say or hear another word about _anything_ that is
past and over. You may answer that I run no risk!
Nevertheless, if you did care to come and see me some day as
an old friend, we might find one or two new points of
contact, for I am rather trying to write myself! You might
almost guess as much from this letter; it is long enough for
anything; but, Harry, if it makes you realize that one of
your oldest friends is glad to have seen you, and will be
gladder still to see you again, and to talk of anything and
everything _except the past_, I shall cease to be ashamed
even of its length!

"And so good-by for the present from

"____"

I omit her name and nothing else. Did I not say in the beginning that it should never be sullied by association with mine? And yet--and yet--even as I write I have a hope in my heart of hearts which is not quite consistent with that sentiment. It is as faint a hope as man ever had, and yet its audacity makes the pen tremble in my fingers. But, if it be ever realized, I shall owe more than I could deserve in a century of atonement to one who atoned more nobly than I ever can. And to think that to the end I never heard one word of it from Raffles!

THE END

* * * * *