Alpha Book

But steering a ghost-ship
through endless tempests is hard labour, Phil; so be a little kind--a
little more than patient, if my hand grows tired at the wheel.
"And now--with all these madly inked pages scattered across my desk, I
draw toward me another sheet--the last I have still unstained; to ask at
last the question which I have shrunk from through all these pages--and
for which these pages alone were written:
"_What_ do you think of me? Asking you, shows how much I care;
dread of your opinion has turned me coward until this last page.
_What_ do you think of me? I am perfectly miserable about Boots,
but that is partly fright--though I know I am safe enough with such
a man. But what sets my cheeks blazing so that I cannot bear to
face my own eyes in the mirror, is the fear of what _you_ must
think of me in the still, secret places of that heart of yours,
which I never, never understood. ALIXE."
It was a week before he sent his reply--although he wrote many answers,
each in turn revised, corrected, copied, and recopied, only to be
destroyed in the end.


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