ill
too shy to bid him stay.

"Perhaps you'd better go," she agreed. "But, Guy, come back for my
birthday."

"As if I should stay away for that! Pauline, will you write to me? At
least in letters you won't be shy to say you love me."

"Oh no, Guy, no. My writing is so horrid."

"But you must write. Pauline, if you want to know why I'm really going
away, it's simply to have a letter from you."

"You must write to me first then," she whispered.

In truth Pauline felt terrified to think how she would ever begin a
letter to Guy. He would cease to love her any more after she had written
to him. He would hate her stupid letters.

"I shall be glad to see Michael again," said Guy. "But I suppose I must
not say anything about you. No, I won't talk about you. Oxford will be
wonderfully quiet without undergraduates, and I shall have letters from
you."

Mrs. Grey came out into the garden.

"Now, Guy, I think you ought to go. Because really the Rector is
getting worried about you and Pauline."

"I'm going into Oxford, Mrs. Grey."

"Well, that is a charming idea--charming, yes."

"But I'll be back for Pauline's birthday."

"Charming--charming," Mrs. Grey still declared. "The Rector will have
forgotten all about it by then."

So Guy left Pauline for a week, and perhaps for more than a week.
Margaret and Monica came home next day, and really, she thought, it was
upsetting all the old ways of her life when she found herself not very
much interested in what they had been doing. Miss Verney with her
ecstatic praise of Guy was better company; but next morning her first
love-letter arrived, and she could not resist peeping into it at
breakfast.

99 ST. GILES, OXFORD,
_April 18th_.

MY ADORED PAULINE,--It's really all I can do to stay in Oxford.
Even Fane seems dull, and though his rooms are jolly, I long for
you.

Have I told you what you are to me? Have I once been able to tell
you....

Ah, there were pages crammed full and full of words that she must read
alone. She could not read them here with her mother and sisters looking
at her over the table. She must read them high in her white fastness at
the top of the house. There all the morning she sat, and when she had
read of his love once, she read of it again and then again, and once
again. How foolish her answering letter would be; how disappointed Guy
would be; but since she had promised, she must write to him; and,
sitting at her d