natural curiosity and burn them instead, the
snub would miss its point, for I shall be no wiser. I'm not afraid that
you will burn them. The feminine in you is too strongly developed for
such a lack of curiosity, but will you answer them? That's the
question!

"Think it over, Katrine! At the moment of reading, you haven't a doubt
of what you will say. Sit down at once to write that haughty letter of
reproof and denial, but--don't send it off by the first post! Relieve
yourself by letting off steam, and then think out the thing calmly.

"Your own life is not all that you could wish, but compare it just for a
moment with mine, and consider the compensations which you enjoy!
Friends, books, papers, happenings of world-wide interest at your door,
or what _seems_ your door to exiles across the world--all these, and
into the bargain, home, and comfort, and _cool_! You must acknowledge,
Katrine, that the odds are on your side!

"If I could take a holiday and come home, you would receive me
graciously as Dorothea's friend. Why should it require a greater effort
to receive me in the spirit?

"Get away from the Cranford spirit, Katrine; refuse to be bound by it, I
see signs,--I tell you frankly, I see signs of its encroachment! Here's
a fine chance of throwing it to the winds. Are you brave enough, fine
enough, woman enough, to work out this thing for yourself, and to decide
as your heart dictates?

"I am very humble; I ask for the moment nothing more than an occasional
letter. Now, what are you going to do? At any rate there's that box!
In common decency you must write once at least to acknowledge that!
Your answer ought, I calculate, to arrive about four weeks from to-day.

"Yours faithfully,

"Jim Blair."

"Well, I'm--!" ejaculated Katrine, and stopped aghast. The failure to
finish her sentence was attributable less to good feeling than the utter
inability to find a word strong enough to express the sentiments of the
moment. An onlooker, however, could not have failed to remark the fact
that, be the sentiment what it might, it was certainly extraordinarily
becoming. Katrine's eyes shone, her pale cheeks blazed a damask rose,
the firm lips gaped, showing a flash of small, white teeth. Seated bolt
upright in her high-backed chair, the blue dress outlining the fine
lines of her figure, she reached at that moment her highest
possibilities of beauty, but there was no one to see her, and for the
moment she