cat! If she had been hanging since
her sixtieth birthday, she would certainly be breathless now.

All day, dear, I go about my duties with a most ladylike absence of
passion, but when night comes I cross the sandy waste of the past and
stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. Our
thoughts seem to be a reverberation of the same thunderous roll, and
while they are not identical, they are of the same breadth and
elevation. The conditions of propinquity are responsible; and as love
did not come to me, I had to do as Mahomet did with the mountain.

When he goes from me, Joy vanishes, but leaves a bright track of light
behind, which bursts upon me through the clouds of cigarette smoke that
he has left.

Each day I awaken more warmed and thrilled, like the sun which finds the
mountain tops that he touched with his departing rays still warm when he
sends his shaft of light in the morn.

No maelstrom of distrust do we feel, only a mighty, overpowering passion
that no undress of intimacy can ever destroy.

Good-night, friend of my babyhood, my girlhood, my womanhood. My
greetings for your birthday.

Affy,
MARIANNE.

February 10.

Don't be cross with me, dear, I am in no danger. Your repeated letters
came--I read them, then straightway forgot that they should be answered.
It is no evidence of a lessening of my love for you, but because life
has become so mysteriously perfect for me that I dream away my hours.

One night, seemingly a million years ago, but really only within the
present week, I felt cold as I stood by my stove and plaited my hair--I
have nice hair, Lorna, haven't I? But I didn't seem to notice it. I was
in my nightie and I shivered. My white chiffon bedspread with the pink
roses strewn over it was near, so I drew it close about me and felt that
I had protected myself from the chill. It wasn't an external chill that
made me quake, but something old and deep-rooted and lonely that came
from the depths of the soul in me and begged and pleaded for
recognition.

The big stove with its dozens of mica eyes threw out comforting little
rays of coziness, but the real me still shivered. I walked to the window
and opened it. Strange, disquieting, but gracious thoughts that I had
lost somewhere in the twilight of the night before, came riding back to
me on a snow flurry--it was so still