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My assistants relieved me, and amongst them was now included Miss Dodan. It was only a few days after the Dodans found me at the register, absorbed in receiving my father's message, that Miss Dodan called. She ran toward me at the open door of the station, her face fixed in an anxious expression of half-alarmed expectation. "Did you really, Mr. Dodd, hear anything?
My nerves had undergone a strain quite unusual, and the interior sense of elation, reacting its fits of extreme mental despondency dislocated my system, and accelerated the gliding virus of disease inundating the capillaries of circulation and breaking down the tissues with fever and consumption. Miss Dodan came more and more frequently to see me.
It was, in a sense, an ethical question, but it was quite as hard to determine by ordinary arguments whether I could have any permission to violate my promise to my father, as it was to estimate the exact measure of my obligations to myself and Miss Dodan.
It was the autumn of the southern country, and the dreamy spell of the declining days fell softly upon the material tissues of nature, as well as on the acquiescent spirit of man. "Father," said Miss Dodan, uncertainly, while she formed her hand into an improvised tube, and looked through it on the peaceful scene at our feet, "has been telling me of my birthplace in Devonshire.
I would have sunk upon my knees in the abasement and passion of my desire for her, had she not suddenly drawn me to her, flung her arms about my neck and placed her head where well, I am no connoisseur in love scenes but that day Agnes Dodan, without a syllable of sound gave her heart to me.
It was the simple pledge of our mutual love, a pledge that even now as I prepare these last pages of a manuscript that is a testament to the world, soothes my pain and renews the happiness of that day, forever and forever lost. The next message came a few days after my interview with Miss Dodan. It was a rainy day in November the spring time of that Southern land.
Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes of his former happiness.
I assumed that Miss Dodan needed the change, that the educational value of such an experience would be incalculable. Mr. Dodan was frankly surprised and pleased. This unexpected support and enthusiastic commendation of his plan was something he gratefully accepted, and he assumed a new manner toward me. He ascribed to me a power of self-renunciation which won his ardent approval and admiration.
His last words were scrawled almost illegibly by his failing hand "Remember, watch, wait, I will send the messages." Miss Dodan came to the plateau and was helpful; to me especially. She kept up my breaking spirits, and her womanly tenderness, her brave grace, and the joy my loving heart felt in seeing her, enabled me to go through the trial of death and separation. All was finished.
The last moments I passed alone with Miss Dodan were sacred, sweet memories; all that I have now. Mr. and Mrs. Dodan and Miss Dodan were waving their handkerchiefs from the deck as I turned sorrowfully back to Christ Church. I realized that I had seen Miss Dodan for the last time, and that when she returned to New Zealand, she would only find me gone. There was but one duty now.
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