Then he must be so far
ruled by him, if necessary, as to give him the letter and put himself, as
the author, beyond an appeal which he found peculiarly poignant.
The letter, which had overcome the tacit misgivings of his mother as they
read it and read it again together, was from a girl who had perhaps no
need to confess herself young, or to own her inexperience of the world
where stories were written and printed. She excused herself with a
delicacy which Verrian's correspondents by no means always showed for
intruding upon him, and then pleaded the power his story had over her as
the only shadow of right she had in addressing him. Its fascination,
she said, had begun with the first number, the first chapter, almost the
first paragraph. It was not for the plot that she cared; she had read
too many stories to care for the plot; it was the problem involved. It
was one which she had so often pondered in her own mind that she felt, in
a way she hoped he would not think conceited, almost as if the story was
written for her. She had never been able to solve the problem; how he
would solve it she did not see how she could wait to know; and here she
made him a confidence without which, she said, she should not have the
courage to go on. She was an invalid, and her doctor had told her that,
though she might live for months, there were chances that she might die
at any moment suddenly.
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