"And let me try to get to sleep.

You know I don't like it, and you know I can't help it." "Yes," the girl assented.
"Then go to bed," said the general concisely.
Agatha did not obey her father.

She thought she ought to kiss him, but she decided that she had better postpone this; so she merely gave him a tender goodnight, to which he made no response, and shut herself into her own room, where she remained sitting and staring out into the moonlight, with a smile that never left her lips.
When the moon sank below the horizon, the sky was pale with the coming day, but before it was fairly dawn, she saw something white, not much greater than some moths, moving before her window.

She pulled the valves open and found it a bit of paper attached to a thread dangling from above.

She broke it loose and in the morning twilight she read the great central truth of the universe: "I love you.