So, when it comes, you must try not to grudge me my 'long leave.' But there are several things you ought to know, and which I want you to know, yet I have never been able to bring myself to speak of them to you.

To tell you about them meant digging into the past--and very often there is a hot coal lingering in the heart of a dead fire that is apt to burn the fingers of whoever rakes out the ashes.

Frankly, then, I funked it.

But now the time has come when I can't put it off any longer.
"Little old pal, have you ever wondered why I loved you so much--why you stood so close to my heart?
I used to tease you and say it was because we were no relation to each other, didn't I?
If you had been really my niece, proper respect (on your part, of course, for your aged uncle!) and the barrier of a generation would have set us the usual miles apart.
But there was never anything of that with us, was there?
I bullied you, I know, when you needed it, but we were always comrades.

And to me, you were something more than a comrade, something almost sacred and always adorable--the child of the woman I loved.
"For we should have been married, Sara, your mother and I, had I not been a poor man.