elf. It had turned out
best, after all.

That he loved her still, he felt sure, as he held in his hand the pages
she had written and felt the old thrill he knew so well in his fingers,
and the old, quick beating of the heart. But he acknowledged gladly--too
gladly, perhaps--that he had done well to let her go.

Then came the second impression. "I like to remember the time when you
used to talk to me of all your plans." The words rang in his ears and
called up delicious visions of the past, soft hours spent by her side
while she listened with something warmer than patience to the outpouring
of his young hopes and aspirations. She, at least, had understood him,
and encouraged him, and strengthened him with her sympathy. And why not
now, if then? Why should she not understand him now, when he most needed
a friend, and give him sympathy now, when he stood most in need of it?
She was in Egypt and he in Rome, it was true. But what of that? If she
could write to him, he could write to her, and she could answer him
again. No one had ever felt with him as she had.

He did not hesitate long. On that same evening, after dinner, he went
back to his own room and wrote to her. It was a little hard at first,
but, as the ink flowed, he expressed himself better and more clearly.
With an odd sort of caution, which had grown upon him of late, he tried
to make his letter take a form as similar to hers as possible.

"MY DEAR FRIEND" (he wrote)--"If people always yielded to their
impulses as you have done in writing to me, there would be more
good fellowship and less loneliness in the world. It would not be
easy for me to tell you how great a pleasure you have given me.
Perhaps, hereafter, I may compare it to your own memory of the Kiew
candied fruits! For the present I do not find a worthy comparison
to my hand.

"You ask many questions. I propose to answer them all. Will you
have the patience to read what I write? I hope so, for the sake of
the time when I used to talk to you of all my plans--and which you
say you like to remember. For another reason, too. I have never
felt so lonely in my life as I feel now, nor so much in need of a
friend--not a helping friend, but one to whom I can speak a little
freely. I am very much alone. A sort of estrangement has grown up
between my mother and me, and she no longer takes my side in all I
want to do, as she did o