pect of their relation; she was well aware
of its comicality; but though Franklin's devotion was at times something
of a burden, though she could expect from him none of the glamour of
courtship, she could ill have dispensed with his absorption in her.
Franklin's absorption in her was part of her own personality; she would
hardly have known herself without it; and her relation to him, irksome,
even absurd as she sometimes found it, was perhaps the one thing in her
life that most nearly linked her to reality; it was a mirage, at all
events, of the responsible affections that her life lacked.

And now, in her mood of positive morbidity, the sight of Franklin's
handwriting on the thick envelope brought her the keenest sense she had
ever had of his value. One might have no aim oneself, yet to be some one
else's aim saved one from that engulfing consciousness of nonentity; one
might be uncertain and indefinite, but a devotion like Franklin's
really defined one. She must be significant, after all, since this very
admirable person--admirable, though ineligible--had found her so for so
many years. It was with a warming sense of restoration, almost of
reconstruction, that she opened the letter, drew out the thickly-folded
sheets of thin paper and began to read the neat, familiar writing. He
told her everything that he was doing and thinking, and about everything
that interested him. He wrote to her of kinetics and atoms as if she had
been a fellow-student. It was as if, helplessly, he felt the whole bulk
of his outlook to be his only chance of interesting her, since no detail
was likely to do so. Unfortunately it didn't interest her much.
Franklin's eagerness about some local election, or admiration for some
talented pupil, or enthusiasm in regard to a new theory that delved
deeper and circled wider than any before, left her imagination inert, as
did he. But to-night all these things were transformed by the greatness
of her own need and of her own relief. And when she read that Franklin
was to be in Europe in six weeks' time, and that he intended to spend
some months there, and, if she would allow it, as near her as was
possible, a sudden hope rose in her and seemed almost a joy.

Was it so impossible, after all, as an alternative? Equipped with her
own outlooks, with her wider experience, and with her ample means, might
not dear Franklin be eligible? To sink back on Franklin, after all these
years, would be, of course, to confe