sparkle out of everything. Having nothing
better to do, and not caring to go anywhere in particular without
you, I remained in the city until Jack Courtwell noted my general
despondency and brought me down here to his place on the sound to
manage some open-air theatricals he is getting up. 'As You Like It'
is of course the piece selected. Miss Harrison plays Rosalind. I
wish you had been here to take the part. Miss Harrison reads her
lines well, but she is either a maiden-all-forlorn or a tomboy;
insists on reading into the part all sorts of deeper meanings and
highly colored suggestions wholly out of harmony with the pastoral
setting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates the
emotional element and quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facile
wit and really brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando,
but rumor says he is epris of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith,
and his memory is treacherous and his interest fitful.

"My new pictures arrived last week on the 'Gascogne.' The Puvis de
Chavannes is even more beautiful than I thought it in Paris. A pale
dream-maiden sits by a pale dream-cow, and a stream of anemic water
flows at her feet. The Constant, you will remember, I got because
you admired it. It is here in all its florid splendor, the whole
dominated by a glowing sensuosity. The drapery of the female figure
is as wonderful as you said; the fabric all barbaric pearl and gold,
painted with an easy, effortless voluptuousness, and that white,
gleaming line of African coast in the background recalls memories of
you very precious to me. But it is useless to deny that Constant
irritates me. Though I cannot prove the charge against him, his
brilliancy always makes me suspect him of cheapness."

Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of this
strange love-letter. They seemed to be filled chiefly with
discussions of pictures and books, and with a slow smile she laid
them by.

She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went to open
the window. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated, feeling
suddenly as though some danger were lurking outside, some inordinate
desire waiting to spring upon her in the darkness. She stood there
for a long time, gazing at the infinite sweep of the sky.

"Oh, it is all so little, so little there," she murmured. "When
everything else is so dwarfed, why should one expect love to be
great? Why should one try to read highly colored suggestions