a kind of radiant surprise.

Rose was silent a moment. Then she said, "And do you think it
will have the same effect on Mr. Wilkins?"

Lotty laughed. "I don't know," she said. "But even if it
doesn't, there's enough love about to flood fifty Mr. Wilkinses, as you
call him. The great thing is to have lots of love about. I don't
see," she went on, "at least I don't see here, though I did at home,
that it matters who loves as long as somebody does. I was a stingy
beast at home, and used to measure and count. I had a queer obsession
about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can
really be distinguished from vengeance. It's only love that's any
good. At home I wouldn't love Mellersh unless he loved me back,
exactly as much, absolute fairness. Did you ever. And as he didn't,
neither did I, and the aridity of that house! The aridity . . ."

Rose said nothing. She was bewildered by Lotty. One odd effect
of San Salvatore on her rapidly developing friend was her sudden free
use of robust words. She had not used them in Hampstead. Beast and
dog were more robust than Hampstead cared about. In words, too, Lotty
had come unchained.

But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write
to her husband and say "Come." The Wilkins menage, however pompous
Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a
healthier, more natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to
Mellersh and would get an answer. She couldn't write to Frederick, for
only too well did she know he wouldn't answer. At least, he might
answer--a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it,
with perfunctory thanks for her letter. But that would be worse than
no answer at all; for his handwriting, her name on an envelope
addressed by him, stabbed her heart. Too acutely did it bring back the
letters of their beginnings together, the letters from him so desolate
with separation, so aching with love and longing. To see apparently
one of these very same letters arrive, and open it to find:

Dear Rose--Thanks for letter. Glad you're having a good time.
Don't hurry back. Say if you want any money. Everything going
splendidly here--
Yours, Frederick.

--no, it couldn't be borne.

"I don't think I'll come down to the village with you to-day,"
she said, looking up at Lotty with eyes suddenly gone dim. "I think I
want to think."

"All right," said Lotty, at once starting off bris