can say. I
don't know how I shall win through. And I shall have more to thank you
for, if you tell me that our friendship hasn't been disturbed by my
seeming ingratitude.

"Did you ever see those queer little dried-up Japanese flowers which
seem utterly dead till you throw them into water? Then they expand and
remember that they are alive. I am one of them. Don't pour off the
water. I'm afraid if you did, I might be weak enough to dry up again."

CHAPTER XV

To get back the jewel he had thought lost, was to be born into a new
life in a new world. Denin had to tell the portrait in the redwood
frame, what he felt, for he dared not tell Barbara herself. To have
given her a glimpse of his heart would have been to show that its fire
had not been kindled by friendship. His answer to her letter was so
tame, so lifeless compared to the song of his soul, that it seemed
something to laugh at--or to weep over. But there was a line he must
not pass. He knew this well, and that his only happiness could be in
the Mirador and in Barbara's friendly letters, as long as she cared to
write. Mr. Carl Pohlson Bradley might go on bidding for the Mirador up
to a million if he liked. There was no chance of his getting it! Denin
was as sure of that, as he was of the shape of the world, or perhaps a
little surer. Then, one day, a thunderbolt fell in the garden. It was
dropped by the postman, in the form of a letter.

Barbara wrote, "Everything is changed since I wrote you six days ago. I
can't live here any longer, under the same roof with a man whose one
pleasure is to torture and insult me. I haven't spoken about him to you
lately. There was no need, but things grew no better between us--worse,
rather, for he resented the calmness I was finding through you. It made
him furious apparently, that he had no longer the same power over me as
at first, to drive me away from him, crying, or shaking all over with
shame and anger at the dreadful things he said. I hardly cared at all
of late days, when he called me a hypocrite, or a liar, or a damned
fool, or other names far worse. I paid him a visit morning and evening,
or at other times if he sent for me, and went out motoring or driving
with him when he felt well enough to go. He refused to move without me,
and so, as the doctor ordered fresh air for him, I couldn't refuse.
When he was at his worst--or what I thought the worst then--I could
look straight ahead, and think of things you sai