It was her first love-letter; and, because she did not know she was
writing a love-letter she wrote out of the fulness of an overflowing
heart. Also the hour was the precise hour when consciousness of her
presence had gone over Wayland in flood tides of fierce tenderness.
That may have been a mere coincidence. I set it down because such
coincidences daily touch life.

Here is the letter.


_Twelve O'clock_.

Are you a 'vision fugitive,' O Ranger Man? Do you know that I have
seen you less than ten times and really known you less than a month?
Is it a dream? What happened? I did not mean to do it. I did not
want it. I did not ask it. Why has it come? You said 'best gifts
came unasked; perhaps, they also go unsent!' This one can never go,
Dick. I've been weaving it in and out for three whole hours, (no, not
_thinking_, I _think_ of other people,) weaving it in and out of every
strand of me. I know now I have been waiting for it a billion years;
ages and ages ago when you and I were cave people or desert runners
like the 20,000 B. C. skeleton in the British Museum; and in the
shuffle of atoms, we got apart. We shall never stray again; for I have
locked last night in my heart. Yesterday I could look up at the
Mountain, and what I saw was the snow cross, cold and far away.
To-night I look up. The Mountain is still there but not the same--what
I feel is--_you_; and you are not far away. I am warm with happiness,
delirious when I let myself _stop_ thinking.

I have tried to sleep but cannot. Your old Mountain has been talking