The strong light, the pricking air, had kept her wakeful; and she had been employing her time in writing to her mother, who was also her friend.
"...

Dear little mother--You will say I have been unkind--I say it to myself.

But would it really have been fairer if I had forbidden him to join us?
There was just a chance--it seems ridiculous now--but there was--I confess it! And by my letter from Toronto--though really my little note might have been written to anybody--I as good as said so to him, 'Come and throw the dice and--let us see what falls out!' Practically, that is what it amounted to--I admit it in sackcloth and ashes.

Well!--we have thrown the dice--and it won't do! No, it won't, it won't do! And it is somehow all my fault--which is abominable.

But I see now, what I never saw at home or in Italy, that he is a thousand years older than I--that I should weary and jar upon him at every turn, were I to marry him.