Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on the opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything except something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill comes with the snip of the paper knife; but if we be in a foreign land and long years absent from home, then is a letter subtly powerful to move us, even more before it is opened than after it is read.
It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father Beret.

The last, before the one now in his hand, had made him ill of nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit for a moment his life work as a missionary.

Ever since that day he had found it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most difficult and exacting duty.

Now the mere touch of the paper in his hand gave him a sense of returning weakness, dissatisfaction, and longing.

The home of his boyhood, the rushing of the Rhone, a seat in a shady nook of the garden, Madeline, his sister, prattling beside him, and his mother singing somewhere about the house--it all came back and went over him and through him, making his heart sink strangely, while another voice, the sweetest ever heard--but she was ineffable and her memory a forbidden fragrance.
Father Beret tottered across the forlorn little room and knelt before the crucifix holding his clasped hands high, the letter pressed between them.