t take me with my own soul!"

Therese felt a shiver of fear mingled with joy.

CHAPTER XIV. THE AVOWAL

She next day she said to herself that she would reply to Robert. It was
raining. She listened languidly to the drops falling on the terrace.
Vivian Bell, careful and refined, had placed on the table artistic
stationery, sheets imitating the vellum of missals, others of pale
violet powdered with silver dust; celluloid pens, white and light, which
one had to manage like brushes; an iris ink which, on a page, spread a
mist of azure and gold. Therese did not like such delicacy. It seemed
to her not appropriate for letters which she wished to make simple and
modest. When she saw that the name of "friend," given to Robert on
the first line, placed on the silvery paper, tinted itself like
mother-of-pearl, a half smile came to her lips. The first phrases were
hard to write. She hurried the rest, said a great deal of Vivian Bell
and of Prince Albertinelli, a little of Choulette, and that she had seen
Dechartre at Florence. She praised some pictures of the museums, but
without discrimination, and only to fill the pages. She knew that Robert
had no appreciation of painting; that he admired nothing except a little
cuirassier by Detaille, bought at Goupil's.

She saw again in her mind this cuirassier, which he had shown to her
one day, with pride, in his bedroom, near the mirror, under family
portraits. All this, at a distance, seemed to her petty and tiresome.
She finished her letter with words of friendship, the sweetness of which
was not feigned. Truly, she had never felt more peaceful and gentle
toward her lover. In four pages she had said little and explained less.
She announced only that she should stay a month in Florence, the air of
which did her good. Then she wrote to her father, to her husband, and to
Princess Seniavine. She went down the stairway with the letters in her
hand. In the hall she threw three of them on the silver tray destined
to receive papers for the post-office. Mistrusting Madame Marmet, she
slipped into her pocket the letter to Le Menil, counting on chance to
throw it into a post-box.

Almost at the same time Dechartre came to accompany the three friends
in a walk through the city. As he was waiting he saw the letters on the
tray.

Without believing that characters could be divined through penmanship,
he was susceptible to the form of letters as to elegance of drawing. The
writing of There