them my clothes. I just selfishly like pleasing people, and I
think giving is the best amusement extant--and you give your very self
from morning to night. You lucky person! How could I do that? Could
I? Would I balk, do you think? You say I'm not capable of loving
anything or anybody. I think you are wrong. I think I could, some
day, love somebody as hard as any woman or man has, ever. Not Alec.
What will happen if I marry Alec and then do that--if the somebody
comes? That would be a mess; the worst mess yet. The end of the
world; but I forget; my world ends anyhow. I'll be a stone image in a
chair--a cold, unloveable stone image with a hot, boiling heart. I
won't--I _won't_. This world is just five minutes, maybe--but me--in a
chair--ten years. Oh--I _won't_.

What I want you to do is to write me just about the things you're
doing, and the people--the poor people, and the pitiful things and the
funny things--the atmosphere of it. Could you forget that you don't
know me, and write as you would to a cousin or an old friend? That
would be good. That would help. Only, anyhow, write, for without your
letters I can't tell what bomb may burst. Don't thunder next time.
But even if you thunder, write. The letters do guard the pistol--I
can't help it if you say not. It has to be so now, anyway. They guard
it. Always--

AUGUST FIRST.

WARCHESTER,
St. Andrew's Parish House,
Sept. 12th.

You're right. It's idiotic to leap on people like that. I knew I was
all wrong the moment after the letter went. And when nothing came from
you--it wasn't pleasant. I nearly wrote--I more nearly telegraphed
your Robert Halarkenden. Do you mind if I say that for two days, just
lately--in fact, they were yesterday and the day before--I was on the
edge of asking for leave of absence to go west? You see, if you had
done it, it was so plainly my fault. And I had to know. Then I
argued--it's ghastly, but I argued that it would be in the papers. And
it wasn't. Of course, it might possibly have been kept out. But
generally it isn't. My knowledge of happenings in Chicago and
thereabouts, since my last letter, would probably surprise you a
little. Yes, I "noticed" that you didn't write--more than I noticed
the heat, which, now I think, has been bad. But when you're pretty
sure you've blundered in a matter of life and death, you don't pray for
rain.

You've turned a corner. _A_ corner. _The_ corner--th