to take an intolerably long time.

"Yes," she observed at length, "a very charming letter."

Rodney's face was half turned away, as if in bashfulness. Her view of
his profile almost moved her to laughter. She glanced through the pages
once more.

"I see no harm," William blurted out, "in helping her--with Greek, for
example--if she really cares for that sort of thing."

"There's no reason why she shouldn't care," said Katharine, consulting
the pages once more. "In fact--ah, here it is--'The Greek alphabet is
absolutely FASCINATING.' Obviously she does care."

"Well, Greek may be rather a large order. I was thinking chiefly
of English. Her criticisms of my play, though they're too generous,
evidently immature--she can't be more than twenty-two, I suppose?--they
certainly show the sort of thing one wants: real feeling for poetry,
understanding, not formed, of course, but it's at the root of everything
after all. There'd be no harm in lending her books?"

"No. Certainly not."

"But if it--hum--led to a correspondence? I mean, Katharine, I take it,
without going into matters which seem to me a little morbid, I mean,"
he floundered, "you, from your point of view, feel that there's nothing
disagreeable to you in the notion? If so, you've only to speak, and I
never think of it again."

She was surprised by the violence of her desire that he never should
think of it again. For an instant it seemed to her impossible to
surrender an intimacy, which might not be the intimacy of love, but was
certainly the intimacy of true friendship, to any woman in the world.
Cassandra would never understand him--she was not good enough for him.
The letter seemed to her a letter of flattery--a letter addressed to his
weakness, which it made her angry to think was known to another. For he
was not weak; he had the rare strength of doing what he promised--she
had only to speak, and he would never think of Cassandra again.

She paused. Rodney guessed the reason. He was amazed.

"She loves me," he thought. The woman he admired more than any one in
the world, loved him, as he had given up hope that she would ever
love him. And now that for the first time he was sure of her love, he
resented it. He felt it as a fetter, an encumbrance, something which
made them both, but him in particular, ridiculous. He was in her power
completely, but his eyes were open and he was no longer her slave or her
dupe. He would be her master in future. The instant