ted that she missed their playtimes;
and once she wrote to him, late on a cold Berkshire night, with a
black rain and wind like a baying bloodhound:

It is so still in my room & so wild outside that I am
frightened. I have tried to make myself smart in a blue silk
dressing gown & a tosh lace breakfast cap, & I will write
neatly with a quill pen from the Mayfair, but just the same
I am a lonely baby & I want you here to comfort me. Would
you be too shocked to come? I would put a Navajo blanket on
my bed & a papier mache Turkish dagger & head of Othello
over my bed & pretend it was a cozy corner, that is of
course if they still have papier mache ornaments, I suppose
they still live in Harlem & Brooklyn. We would sit _very_
quietly in two wicker chairs on either side of my fireplace
& listen to the swollen brook in the ravine just below my
window. But with no Hawk here the wind keeps wailing that
Pan is dead & that there won't ever again be any sunshine on
the valley. Dear, it really _isn't_ safe to be writing like
this, after reading it you will suppose that it's just you
that I am lonely for, but of course I'd be glad for Phil or
Puggy Crewden or your nice solemn Walter MacMonnies or _any_
suitor who would make foolish noises & hide me from the
wind's hunting. Now I will seal this up & _NOT_ send it in
the morning.

Your playmate Ruth

Here is one small kiss on the forehead but remember it is
just because of the wind & rain.

Presumably she did mail the letter. At least, he received it.

He carried her letters in the side-pocket of his coat till the
envelopes were worn at the edges and nearly covered with smudged
pencil-notes about things he wanted to keep in mind and would, of
course, have kept in mind without making notes. He kept finding new
meanings in her letters. He wanted them to indicate that she loved
him; and any ambiguous phrase signified successively that she loved,
laughed at, loathed, and loved him. Once he got up from bed to take
another look at a letter and see whether she had said, "I hope you had
a dear good time at the Explorers' Club dinner," or "I hope you had a
good time, dear."

Carl was entirely sincere in his worried investigation of her state of
mind. He knew that both Ruth and he had the instability as well as the
initiative of the vagabond. As quickly as they had claimed