As she spoke, she faltered, overcome with emotion, and I dropped my pen on the floor, so agitated was I, and nearly bursting with all I wanted to say.

‘Have you finished your letter?’ Harville asked me, his attention attracted by the noise.

I was about to admit that I had when an idea occurred to me, and saying, ‘Not quite, a few lines more. I shall have done in five minutes,’ I pulled another sheet of paper towards me, picked up my pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to write. My pen scrawled across the paper in my haste as my feelings poured out of me.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.

And as I wrote, I heard more and more words that almost overpowered me.

‘I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps, you will say, these were all written by men,’ Harville was saying.

‘Perhaps I shall,’ said Anne. ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. I will not allow books to prove anything.’

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story, I thought. And I was determined to tell Anne mine:

I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

‘But how shall we prove anything?’ Harville asked.

‘We never shall,’ admitted Anne. ‘We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or, in some respect, saying what should not be said.’

With every word, I was more and more convinced that she had not forgotten me, that she loved me still, for what else could her talk about betraying a confidence mean?

Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?

‘Ah! if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, ‘ “God knows whether we ever meet again!”’ said Harville.

‘Oh! I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman,’ said Anne.

Then she knew that men could be constant! And, knowing it, must know that I could be constant, too!

My pen responded to her, as my voice, at the present time, could not:

I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I was about to put down my pen when I realized that Anne was still speaking.

‘I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives,’ she said. ‘I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!’

Is that what she thought? That she loved longest when hope was gone? Nay, for I would love her forever, with or without hope.

‘You are a good soul,’ said Harville affectionately.

A good soul, indeed.

Sophia was taking her leave, saying that we would all meet again at the Elliots’ party, and I added a postscript in haste.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or followyour party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.

I folded my letter, made some answer to Sophia, though I had not caught her question, and told Harville I would be with him in half a minute. I sealed the letter, slid it under the scattered paper—for I had time to do no more—and hurried from the room. She would find it there, I was sure.

But a minute later I was not sure, and I decided I must find a way of delivering it into her hand. I returned, saying I had forgotten my gloves, and to my relief I found Anne standing by the table. So she was curious as to what I had been writing, as I had hoped! Standing with my back towards Mrs Musgrove, I pulled out the letter and gave it to Anne, and was out of the room in an instant.

What would she think when she read it? I asked myself. I had written in such haste, I scarcely knew if it was intelligible. I had blotted the ink once to my certain knowledge. Would she be able to make out the words?

I went out into the street. I walked, I turned, I walked again, until at last I found myself in Union Street, and there in front of me was Anne! She was going home, then, and I might have a chance to speak to her. But she was accompanied by Musgrove. I wished him a hundred miles away. I joined them, hoping that, by a word or a look I could read her thoughts, and yet she did not look at me. What did it mean? Was she embarrassed? Yes. But embarrassed because she was pleased with my letter, or embarrassed because she was alarmed by it? I did not know.

I was irresolute. I did not know whether to stay or pass on. I looked again, and this time Anne returned my look. It was not a look to repulse me. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks glowed. I had seen that look before, when we had walked by the river in the first days of our courtship, and it encouraged me to walk by her side.

And then Musgrove said, ‘Captain Wentworth, which way are you going?’

‘I hardly know,’ I said, surprised.

‘Are you going as high as Belmont? Are you going near Camden Place? Because if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my place, and give Anne your arm to her father’s door. She is rather done for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to be at that fellow’s in the market place. He promised me the sight of a capital gun he is just going to send off; said he would keep it unpacked to the last possible moment, that I might see it; and if I do not turn back now, I have no chance.’

‘It sounds too good to be missed. I should be glad to escort Anne; it will give me the greatest pleasure to be of service to her,’ I said, hoping I did not sound too rapturous, for my spirits had soared at the thought of being alone with Anne.

Musgrove left us, and we bent our steps to the gravel walk, where we could talk to our hearts’ content. As soon as we reached it, the words tumbled out of me, for I could contain them no longer.

‘I cannot be easy ... I cannot be still ... Anne, tell me, is there hope for me?’ I said, scarcely daring to breathe.

‘Yes, there is hope, more than hope,’ she said, in accents as breathless as my own. ‘I have been so wrong ...’ she said.

I wanted to shout for joy, but I said only, ‘Not wrong, never wrong.’

‘If you could only know what my feelings have been since the day you left Somerset eight years ago.’

‘Did you regret me at once?’ I asked.

‘I did, though at the time I still thought I was right to have refused you.’

‘How could you have done it, when you were so much in love with me? The times I spent with you that summer were the happiest of my life. Do you remember them, too?’

‘Every day. I remember the way my heart lifted every time I saw you, looking so much more alive than anyone I knew. Your spirit captivated me, and so did your tales of foreign shores, your zest for life, and your love of me,’ she added with a blush. ‘No one had ever looked at me like that, and if they had, I would not have wanted them to. But with you, everything was different. With you, the world was a bright and wonderful place.’

‘I asked you once before if you would marry me. I ask you again. Will you marry me, Anne?’

‘I will,’ she said.

A slight shadow crossed my face.

‘You need not be afraid that I will change my mind,’ she reassured me. ‘Then I was a young girl, persuaded by friends who knew more of the world than I did, who told me that it would lead to unhappiness; that I would stand in your way; that you would not be free to pursue your goals; that your ambitions would be frustrated because of me; that you would come to regret your decision; and that I, worn down by anxiety, would come to regret mine. Now I am a woman who knows her own mind and heart, and a woman who knows yours. I have no fears, no apprehensions, and I will not be persuaded out of my future happiness by anything anyone can say to me.’