After all, mere curiosity as to the nature of that mystery was a small matter. It seemed of more worth to feel, as he did, that the woman who had planned this system of surprises for him was one of no ordinary mind. And it was no ordinary woman who had written the words that he now read: SIR AND MY FRIEND: Almost I am in despair. This is my fifth letter; you receive it, perhaps, some months after your start. I think you would have come back before now, if that had been possible. I had no news of you, and now I dread news. Should you still be gone a year from the time I write this, then I shall know that you were dead. Dead? Yes, I have written that word!
The swift thought comes to me that you will never see this at all--that it may, it must, arrive too late. Yet I must send it, even under that chance. I must write it, though it ruin all my happiness. Shall it come to you too late, others will take it to my husband. Then this secret--the one secret of my life--will be known. Ah, I hope this may come to your eyes, your living eyes; but should it not, none the less I must write it.
What matter? If it should be read by any after your death, that would be too late to make difference with you, or any difference for me. After that I should not care for anything--not even that then others would know what I would none might ever know save you and my Creator, so long as we both still lived.
This wilderness which you love, the wilderness to which you fled for your comfort--what has it done for you? Have you found that lonely grave which is sometimes the reward of the adventurer thither? If so, do you sleep well? I shall envy you, if that is true. I swear I often would let that thought come to me--of the vast comfort of the plains, of the mountains--the sweep of the untiring winds, sweet in the trees and grasses--or the perpetual sound of water passing by, washing out, to the voice of its unending murmurs, all memory of our trials, of our sins.
What need now to ask you to come back? What need to reproach you any further? How could I--how can I--with this terrible thought in my soul that I am writing to a man whose eyes cannot see, whose ears cannot hear?
Still, what difference, whether or not you be living? Have not your eyes thus far been blind to me? Have not your ears been deaf to me, even when I spoke to you direct? It was the call of your country as against my call. Was ever thinking woman who could doubt what a strong man would do? I suppose I ought to have known. But oh, the longing of a woman to feel that she is something greater in a man's life even than his deeds and his ambitions--even than his labors--even than his patriotism!