The Love Letter Read Online Free PDF

in her mind for a long time.
    “I don’t see why not. That’s how you referred to me in your letter.”
    Sabrina ’s horrified gasp was barely audible, but it hardly mattered. Meredith hadn’t waited to see her reaction. Her mind in a whirl, she drifted back to her seat behind the desk. With a few words, the one element of comfort in that unfortunate affair - the knowledge that Meredith had never found the letter – had been swept away leaving her defenseless once more.
    How c ould she face him again knowing that he was intimately familiar with her innermost thoughts? All these weeks and months when she’d thought herself safe, Meredith had known the contents of the letter. Sabrina slowly let her head fall into her hands. She didn’t want this horrible nightmare to start again. Would her suffering over the letter ever end?
    It had never been part of Sabrina’s plan to fall in love with Professor Copplin, especially after she’d more or less laughed at all the others who’d done the same thing. But after that collision outside his classroom, her heart had taken over her common sense. For obvious reasons, she never told anyone this embarrassing secret.
    She knew there was no chance of him ever feeling the same way about her. The deck was stacked against her in so many ways. He was an educated professional man, she a lowly student. He was incredibly good-looking, and she was nothing but average. The list could go on and on.
    Sabrina was content to admire him from a distance and receive his quick, impersonal smile whenever they happened to meet. It was a harmless passion that hurt no one; a one-sided love affair that she expected would die for lack of encouragement.
    Unfortunately, this wasn’t how things played out. Time didn’t lessen the intensity of her feelings; it only made them stronger. Sabrina soon learned the contrary nature of love and how tenaciously it will hang on despite overwhelming odds and no hope of success.
    In an effort to gain some sort of closure to a situation that was unlikely to end as she desired, Sabrina wrote a letter in which she faithfully recorded the words of love that could never be spoken. There was relief in expressing the tumultuous emotions filling her heart and mind. There was also a measure of security because the man who’d inspired such devotion would never see one word. Once the letter was complete, it required a special place. Sabrina tucked the folded letter inside a childhood journal where it should have been safe from prying eyes.
    Even now, a year later, she could vividly recall the feeling of despair that had washed over her when Sheila laughingly confessed her delivery of the love letter. The embarrassment of having Professor Copplin know how she felt had almost outweighed the repercussions to Sabrina should he choose to make the letter public.
    Colleges tend to frown on any student bold enough to declare their feelings for a faculty member in such familiar terms. Her dismissal hadn’t been outside the realm of possibility. Such an action was unthinkable.
    Sabrina couldn’t take such a risk. Instead, she devised a plan to retrieve the letter – something in her saner moments she would have been the first to admit was not the smartest thing to do. But these weren’t her sane moments; she was beside herself with fear and mortification.
    Sitting now in the quiet inn, Sabrina had no trouble recalling every detail of that harrowing afternoon: the long walk from her apartment to the building where Meredith’s office was located, the anxious wait for his secretary to leave for lunch, and then her cautious entry into his private domain. Everything had been going so well to that point.
    There had been just one problem in her calculations. A lightning storm the previous evening had knocked out power in one of the classroom buildings. In consequence, his lecture had been rescheduled, and thus Meredith wasn’t almost a mile across campus when Sabrina started searching his