le of the fire makes me know I am lonely. If my dear mother
was with me she could interprit it to me like dreams in the bible.
But then if my mother was with me, I think this grey day would
seem shining. I think the still would only be quiitness if my
mother was with me."

As Sophy read these last words she raised them to her lips. It seemed to
her that Bobby need not fear about becoming "a author anyhow." She could
not think that it was only mother-love that made "A Grey Day" seem
unusual to her.

Then she opened Amaldi's letter. Here, too, was an unexpected pleasure.
She had found his letters charming from the first, but in this one it
was as if he had put aside a certain reserve that she had always noticed
before. He might have been talking to her over a log fire at Le
Vigne---- Or, no, she corrected herself with a smile--never had Amaldi
"talked" to her with the ease, the fulness, the alternate gaiety and
depth with which he wrote to her in this long, delightful letter. She
sat holding it in her hand when she had finished reading it, trying to
recall clearly his dark, irregular face and olive eyes--the sound of his
voice. And she smiled again, thinking of the Corinthians' opinion of
Paul: ".... His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; ... but his
speech is contemptible." "Dear Amaldi...." she thought, still smiling.
"I wonder how it is that you are such a silent man as a rule, and yet
can write such perfectly adorable letters?"

She put his letter with Bobby's and laid them both away. For a long time
she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the snowy wilds towards
the sunset. The afterglow burned red through the inky pines. The snow
shone a queer, witch-like blue in the twilight. Sophy saw it all without
seeing. She was thinking that there were beautiful things in her life
still ... that she ought to be very grateful ... that after a while she
ought even to be happy in them....

But as she gazed at the smouldering watchfires of the west, Bobby's
words came back to her: "I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the
red of the fire in the greyness...."

XLV

Sophy told Miss Pickett all about Amaldi. Sometimes she would read her
extracts from his letters when they were unusually delightful.

One day, towards spring, when Sophy had been thus reading to her, she
said thoughtfully:

"Sophy, child--you aren't afraid of preparing a new unhappiness for
yourself?"

So