nfortunately I have
every reason not to be."

"Either she won't care at all about not getting the photograph, or else
she'll be offended," Denin prophesied gloomily. "Time will show." And
when the day to which he had looked forward for an answer burst upon
him like a thunderclap, bringing no letter, he thought that time had
shown. She was angry, or worse still, hurt, feeling that like Psyche
with the oil-dropping lantern, she had been rebuked for curiosity. He
saw himself losing her again, through this small and miserable
misunderstanding which he could not, must not, set right. A second loss
would be a thousand times worse than the first, because this time her
soul had belonged to his soul. Their letters, their need of each other,
had circled them as if in a magic ring, or under a glass case which,
transparent to invisibility, had housed them warmly together. A
spiritual nausea of fear, fear of loss, turned his heart to water, so
that over and over again he asked himself what to do, without having
power to answer.

He remembered the old fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast, and how the
Beast lay down despairingly, to die in his garden, because Beauty, who
had made his life bearable, even happy, went away voluntarily and for a
long time forgot her promise to come back.

The Mirador garden lost something of its old spell for Denin. A
glowworm which had come to live at the end of the pergola, and
evidently believed in itself as a permanent family pet, was no longer
an intelligent and charming companion. He had valued it only, he saw
now, because he had meant to amuse Barbara by describing it to her, as
his newest friend. On nights when letters from her had come, all the
passion and romance of the world since its beginning had streamed along
the sea to his eyes, by the path of the moon. But now the white light
had a hard, steely radiance that dazzled his eyes.

While the link held between him and Barbara, it had been easy for Denin
to feel kinship with nature, with the world and worlds beyond. His mind
had traveled hand in hand with hers over the whole earth and on, on to
unknown immensities, as rings from a dropped stone spread endlessly on
the surface of water.

Expecting answers from Barbara, he had had an incentive to live, and
had looked eagerly forward to each new day, as to opening the door of a
room he had never seen before, a room full of beautiful things, made
ready for him alone. Now, when day after day pass