s, then kissed him and told him she was going to the office to
see if there were any letters and went out again. She was gone but a
moment or two; returning, she dropped the little handful which were
addressed to him into his lap and carried one of her own to a chair near
the window.

He dealt idly with the congratulatory and well-wishing messages which
made up his mail. There was but one of them that drew even a gleam of
clearly focused intelligence from him. He gave most of his attention to
Paula. She was a wonderful person to watch,--the expressiveness of her,
that every nerve and muscle of her body seemed to have a part in. She
had opened that letter of hers with nothing but clear curiosity. The
envelope evidently had told her nothing. She had frowned, puzzled, over
the signature and then somehow, darkened, sprung to arms as she made it
out. She didn't read it in an orderly way even then; seemed to be trying
to worry the meaning out of it, like one stripping off husks to get down
to some sort of kernel inside. Satisfied that she had got it at last,
she dropped the letter carelessly on the floor, subsided a little deeper
into her chair and turned a brooding face toward the outdoor light and
away from him.

"Are you crystal-gazing, too?" he asked. Unusually, she didn't turn at
his voice and her own was monotonous with strongly repressed emotion.

"I don't need to. I spent more than a week staring into mine."

That lead was plain enough, but he avoided, deliberately though rather
idly, following it up. The rustle of paper told her that he had turned
back to his letters.

"Anything in your mail?" she asked.

"I think not. You can look them over and see if I've missed anything. To
a man in my disarticulate situation people don't write except to express
the kindness of their hearts. Here's a letter from Mary designed to
prevent me from worrying about her. Full of pleasant little anecdotes
about farm life. It's thoroughly Arcadian, she says. A spot designed by
Heaven for me to rusticate in this summer when--when we go back to town.
Somehow, I never did inhabit Arcady. There's a letter from Martin
Whitney, too, that's almost alarmingly encouraging in its insistence that
I mustn't worry. If only they knew how little I did--these days!"

"Well, that's all right then," she said. "Because those were Doctor
Darby's orders. You weren't to be excited or worried about anything. But,
John, is it really true that you don't? No