as a little
disconcerting to hear these extraneous discords just when my heart was
beating well in tune with the oldest song in the world.

You now need no explanation of what has happened to me. Besides, you've
been expecting it to happen. I knew that, and expected on my part to
disappoint you by its _not_ happening. But this Girl Magic has been too
much for me. I've gone under; and I should be a happy man as the moon
sets and the sun rises to-day if only I'd listened to you on that
moonlight night before it was too late.

Yet is it too late? That's what I want to thrash out. Have I locked the
door between myself and happiness with such a girl as Patricia Moore,
and is the key lost? Or can I with your help find the key, oil the lock,
and open the door?

I used to think a very young girl went about--so to speak--with a love
letter in her pocket all ready for post except that it wasn't yet
addressed. But this girl isn't like that. She wouldn't write the letter
till she knew the address she wanted to send it to. All the same I feel
the possibility that I _could_ make her care for me.

I suppose I was falling in love with her when I wrote you that I wasn't.
I thought it was just very pleasant and amusing to be on terms of
friendship with such a charming and unique girl. But now--_friendship_!
There's as much difference between that and love as there is between a
photographic copy of a Tintoretto and the original Tintoret itself. When
I think of any other man getting Patricia Moore, a link seems to drop
right out of my spine. Yet she's not born for an old maid. Love and a
"happy ending" for her story ought to be attached to her like a label.
If I can't work to get her, some one else will. Caspian is doing it
already, but in spite of the money I don't think she'd ever take him:
her instinct finds truth as the needle finds the pole. Three boys are
also working; but they're big babies, with young-chicken-coloured hair
and merry, heather-mixture eyes. They talk no language but slang. They
come to grief in a preposterous automobile about every ten miles and
attract their idol's attention and startle horses by giving vent to S.
O. S. yells. Whenever they have to enter a room they plunge in as if the
door had broken away before them. Their only conception of a "good time"
is ragtime. If one of them shows signs for a moment of having been
trained to house manners, his chums taunt him. "None of your Peche Melba
airs here!" is th