were devils. And once Victor
wrote to me, saying that he was passing through on his way to Venice and
Rome, and asking if he might come to see me. I did not answer him even;
I could not.

"But during all those weeks I suppose I was getting better, and when I
went south to Rome in November, though I still could not look forward
or contemplate the future at all, I knew better how to deal with the
present hour and the present day. There was no joy in them, but there
was a sort of acquiescence in me. If life--as seemed the only possible
thing--was to be joyless for me, I could at least behave decently. Also
a certain sort of pride, I think, came to my help. I felt that it was
bad manners to appear as I felt--just as when one has a headache one
makes an effort to appear more brilliantly well than usual. One doesn't
like people to know one has a headache, and in the same way I settled
that I didn't like them to know I had a heartache.

"Victor was in Rome. The manager of the branch of their banking business
there had died suddenly, and he had gone to take his place till some one
could be sent out from England. The new man arrived there some ten days
or so after I did; but he still stayed on, for one morning I saw him in
the Forum, and another day I passed him driving. All he knew was that I
had not answered the letter which he wrote to me when I was on Como, and
he made no further attempt to see me. But he did not leave Rome. And
then one day I wrote to him, as I was bound to do, saying that I had not
answered his letter because I believed then that I could not; but that
if he would forgive that, and come to see me----

"Oh, Alice, it is being such a long story. But there is little more. He
came, and I asked him if he was stopping long in Rome, and he said his
plans were uncertain. And then--so gradually that I scarcely knew it was
happening--he began to take care of me; and gradually, also, I began to
expect him to do so. He tells me I was not tiresome; I can't believe
him.

"And then--how does it happen? Nobody knows, though it has happened so
often. One day I saw him differently. I had always been friends with
him, and in those bad years I had always relied on him; but, as I say,
one day I saw him differently. I saw the man himself--not as he struck
me, but as he was. That is just it, dear Alice. 'How he struck me' was
left out, because I was left out. And then I knew I loved him. And--and
that is all, I think."

Lad