II + 

I did, some four weeks later, when with a deal of mail I received the last letter I was ever to receive from Avis Beechinor. + 

Wrote Avis: + 

Dear Robert: + 

Thank you very much for returning my letters and for the beautiful letter you wrote me. No I believe it better you should not come on to see me now and talk the matter over as you suggest because it would probably only make you unhappy. And then too I am sure some day you will be friends with me and a very good and true one. I return the last letter you sent me in a seperate envelope, and I hope it will reach you alright, but as I destroy all my mail as soon as I have read it I cannot send you the others. I have promised to marry Mr. Blagden and we are going to be married on the fifteenth of this month very quietly with no outsiders. So goodbye Robert. I wish you every success and happiness that you may desire and with all my heart I pray you to be true to your better self. God bless you allways. + 

I indulged in a low and melodious whistle. “The little slut!” + 

Then I said: “Peter Blagden again! I do wish that life would try to be a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his conscience by presenting me with that thousand ‘to get married on.’ Even at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened⁠—and I can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!” + 

For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had vividly seen in that instant the two months’ action just overpast, and its three participants⁠—the thin-lipped mother, the besotted millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits of a lifetime. + 

“But I might have known the mother would win,” I reflected: “Why, didn’t Bettie say she would?” + 

I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; and then: + 

“Dear Avis!” said I; “now heaven bless your common sense! and I don’t especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, also, if they’ve a divine favor or two to spare.” + 

And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: + 

I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her⁠ ⁠… You did not appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know⁠ ⁠… It is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have wished it⁠— + 

I read no further. “Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist today that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that you habitually flew about the world in a nightgown, with an Easter lily in your hand⁠—But I remember, dear. I know you’d scratch her eyes out. I know you’d do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this Peter Blagden.” + 

Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way or the other about Avis⁠ ⁠… + 