uch outside the sphere of her marriage as some
transaction in a star. It had simply given her a secret life of
incommunicable joys, as if all the wasted springs of her youth had been
stored in some hidden pool, and she could return there now to bathe in
them.

After that there came a phase of loneliness, through which the life
about her loomed phantasmal and remote. She thought the dead must feel
thus, repeating the vain gestures of the living beside some Stygian
shore. She wondered if any other woman had lived to whom _nothing had
ever happened?_ And then his first letter came....

It was a charming letter--a perfect letter. The little touch of
awkwardness and constraint under its boyish spontaneity told her more
than whole pages of eloquence. He spoke of their friendship--of their
good days together.... Ransom, chancing to come in while she read,
noticed the foreign stamps; and she was able to hand him the letter,
saying gaily: "There's a message for you," and knowing all the while
that _her_ message was safe in her heart.

On the days when the letters came the outlines of things grew
indistinct, and she could never afterward remember what she had done or
how the business of life had been carried on. It was always a surprise
when she found dinner on the table as usual, and Ransom seated opposite
to her, running over the evening paper.

But though Dawnish continued to write, with all the English loyalty to
the outward observances of friendship, his communications came only at
intervals of several weeks, and between them she had time to repossess
herself, to regain some sort of normal contact with life. And the
customary, the recurring, gradually reclaimed her, the net of habit
tightened again--her daily life became real, and her one momentary
escape from it an exquisite illusion. Not that she ceased to believe in
the miracle that had befallen her: she still treasured the reality of
her one moment beside the river. What reason was there for doubting it?
She could hear the ring of truth in young Dawnish's voice: "It's not my
fault if you've made me feel that you would understand everything...."
No! she believed in her miracle, and the belief sweetened and illumined
her life; but she came to see that what was for her the transformation
of her whole being might well have been, for her companion, a mere
passing explosion of gratitude, of boyish good-fellowship touched with
the pang of leave-taking. She even reached the