ing a
dozen pages of foreign note-paper, and began:

My Dearest Margaret: if I should attempt to say _how like a winter hath
thine absence been_, I should incur the risk of being tedious. Really,
it takes the sparkle out of everything. Having nothing better to do, and
not caring to go anywhere in particular without you, I remained in the
city until Jack Courtwell noted my general despondency and brought me
down here to his place on the sound to manage some open-air theatricals
he is getting up. _As You Like It_ is of course the piece selected. Miss
Harrison plays Rosalind. I wish you had been here to take the part. Miss
Harrison reads her lines well, but she is either a maiden-all-forlorn or
a tomboy; insists on reading into the part all sorts of deeper meanings
and highly coloured suggestions wholly out of harmony with the pastoral
setting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates the emotional
element and quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facile wit and
really brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando, but rumor
says he is _epris_ of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith, and his
memory is treacherous and his interest fitful.

My new pictures arrived last week on the _Gascogne_. The Puvis de
Chavannes is even more beautiful than I thought it in Paris. A pale
dream-maiden sits by a pale dream-cow and a stream of anemic water flows
at her feet. The Constant, you will remember, I got because you admired
it. It is here in all its florid splendour, the whole dominated by a
glowing sensuosity. The drapery of the female figure is as wonderful as
you said; the fabric all barbaric pearl and gold, painted with an easy,
effortless voluptuousness, and that white, gleaming line of African
coast in the background recalls memories of you very precious to me. But
it is useless to deny that Constant irritates me. Though I cannot prove
the charge against him, his brilliancy always makes me suspect him of
cheapness.

Here Margaret stopped and glanced at the remaining pages of this strange
love-letter. They seemed to be filled chiefly with discussions of
pictures and books, and with a slow smile she laid them by.

She rose and began undressing. Before she lay down she went to open the
window. With her hand on the sill, she hesitated, feeling suddenly as
though some danger were lurking outside, some inordinate desire waiting
to spring upon her in the darkness. She stood there for a long time,
gazing at the infinite