of December, and you can judge how I shall count on it. Think of the
meeting with R. and E., and the immensity of the joy.

Selfishly I wish that you were here at this moment--actually I'm glad
that you are away. Everybody goes out quite unemotionally and with very
few good-byes--we made far more fuss in the old days about a week-end
visit.

Now that at last it has come--this privileged moment for which I have
worked and waited--my heart is very quiet. It's the test of a character
which I have often doubted. I shall be glad not to have to doubt it
again. Whatever happens, I know you will be glad to remember that at a
great crisis I tried to play the man, however small my qualifications.
We have always lived so near to one another's affections that this going
out alone is more lonely to me than to most men. I have always had some
one near at hand with love-blinded eyes to see my faults as springing
from higher motives. Now I reach out my hands across six thousand miles
and only touch yours with my imagination to say good-bye. What queer
sights these eyes, which have been almost your eyes, will witness! If my
hands do anything respectable, remember that it is your hands that are
doing it. It is your influence as a family that has made me ready for
the part I have to play, and where I go, you follow me.

Poor little circle of three loving persons, please be tremendously
brave. Don't let anything turn you into cowards--we've all got to be
worthy of each other's sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice may prove to
be for the one the greater the nobility demanded of the remainder. How
idle the words sound, and yet they will take deep meanings when time has
given them graver sanctions. I think gallant is the word I've been
trying to find--we must be gallant English women and gentlemen.