shine out--

"And yet what I ask you is neither simple, nor austere! Take care of
Helena for two years. Give her fun, and society,--a good time, and every
chance to marry. Then, after two years, if she hasn't married--if she
hasn't fallen in love---she must choose her course.

"You may well feel you are too young--indeed I wish, for this business,
you were older!--but you will find some nice woman to be hostess and
chaperon; the experiment will interest and amuse you, and the time will
soon go. You know I _could_ not ask you--unless some things were--as they
are. But that being so, I feel as if I were putting into your hands the
chance of a good deed, a kind deed,--blessing, possibly, him that gives,
and her that takes. And I am just now in the mood to feel that kindness
is all that matters, in this mysterious life of ours. Oh, I wish I had
been kinder--to so many people!--I wish--I wish! The hands stretched out
to me in the dark that I have passed by--the voices that have piped to
me, and I have not danced--

"I mustn't cry. It is hard that in one of the few cases when I had the
chance to be kind, and did not wholly miss it, I should be making in the
end a selfish bargain of it--claiming so much more than I ever gave!

"Forgive me, my best of friends--

"You shall come and see me once about this letter, and then we won't
discuss it again--ever. I have talked over the business side of it with
my lawyer, and asked him to tell you anything you don't yet know about my
affairs and Helena's. We needn't go into them."