Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/467

body finds them when we are dead. Neither of us could bear to do it alone."

You hesitated. Then you laughed and said, "All right."

We brought our little bundles to this very room, and stood hand in hand before the fire while they shrunk and flamed. Then we kissed, and you said there should be no more letters. We must always be together.—But these! these were too sacred to be burned. He kept them.

[Musing.] Let me remember this: Whoever she was, if he ever loved her, he had stopped loving her for me. I was his wife. Let me remember all it meant. It meant no more to me than it did to him. Let me remember all the laughing hours, at the table, in the garden, the silences in sweet spring dawns, the twilights when we sat together, my hand in his. O my love! my love!—Whatever she was to him, I was his wife. If her name were on them, her initials, I could bear it better. I could burn them without a thought. But "Her Letters"! He singled her out from other women. At some time she was more to him than any woman in the world. "Her Letters"! Tom, Tom, I am so afraid of having even the memory of these between us. If I burn them—oh, if I read them now it will be easier! There might be a grain of comfort in them. She might say— What could she say? She might reproach him for some coldness— He was never cold to me. She might say— [Resolutely] I will not burn them. Tom, Tom, if you were here! Why, I know what you'd say: "Open 'em, bless you! I've no secrets from you."

[Opens the packet.] O dear God! I am so thankful! They are my letters to him,—mine! What has he written here? "Dear, if you ever find these, you'll forgive me. Those were old bills and things I burned with yours. But you won't find them. I shall destroy them sometime. Only I can't this summer while you're sick."

My own letters! O Marjorie! Marjorie! Nothing, dear, nothing! Only it's so beautiful! it's all so beautiful! I've heard from him. He loved me, dear, he always loved me. Marjorie, listen. It doesn't matter whether he's here with us or there in heaven—he loves us, dear, he's ours!