is room of mine, take one
glance at my mirror, and then cover my face with my hands for joy and
shame while the red waves of love mount as high as they will over it. Ah,
Philip, I shall be _so_ glad to see you, and so afraid! But you shall have
small satisfaction in either fact, for I do not aim to make it easy for
you to win what is already yours in my heart.

P.S.--So you are keeping Jack mured up with you and your _magnum opus_. No
wonder he "crouches in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone." He prefers it
to your company. You once told me that you found humanitarians difficult
to live with: I wonder what Jack thinks of mystical philosophers in the
domestic relation. It almost brings tears to my eyes. And some day in a
similar situation I may be driven to seek the cold curbstone for
companionship.

XXXV

PHILIP TO JESSICA

It seems to me as I read your letters, my sweet wife to be, that I am only
beginning to learn the richness of my fortune. And will you not, when you
write to me next time--will you not call me by one of those dear names
that you speak in the whispering gallery of your heart? I shall barely
receive more than one letter from you now before I come to see you in
person and tell over with you face to face the story of our love. Just a
few more days and I shall be free.

But for the present I want to talk to you about Jack. Indeed, I feel a
little sore on this point. It was you who proposed our adopting him, yet,
after your first words of advice, you have left me to work out the
situation quite unaided; and now I can see that you are laughing at me.
Poor Jack, he was something like a "philosophical proposition" which I had
never very thoroughly analysed. One thing, however, begins to grow
perfectly clear: my home is no place for him; he is only a shadow in my
life and needs to take on substance. Well, I thought at last I had solved
the problem--or at least that O'Meara had solved it for me; but here too I
was disappointed. Really, you must help me out of this muddle.

Do you remember the note-book of O'Meara's that I told you about? Ever
since his death I have been too busy really to look through the volume;
but day before yesterday it occurred to me that I might find some
information there about Jack's parentage, and with that end in view I
spent most of the day deciphering the smeared pages. At first I found
everything in the notes except what I wanted, but toward the end of the
book I di