welcoming any fresh voice which would
divert her mind from the weary longing for her mother. A sort of wild
hope sprung up within her that some woman friend would be sent to her,
that Gladys Farrant, or old Mrs. Osmond, or her secularist friend Mrs.
MacNaughton, whom she loved best of all, would suddenly find themselves
in Florence and come to her in her need.

There entered a tall, overworked waiter. He looked first at her, then at
the note in his hand, spelling out the direction with a puzzled face.

"Mess Rabi Rabi Rabi Rabi an?" he asked hesitatingly.

"Grazie," she replied, almost snatching it from him. The color rushed
to her cheeks as she saw the writing was Brian's, and the instant the
waiter had closed the door she tore open the envelope with trembling
hands.

It was a last appeal, written after he had returned from wandering among
the Apennines, worn out in body and shaken from the noble fortitude of
the morning. The strong passionate words woke an answering thrill in
Erica's heart. He asked her to think it all over once more, he had gone
away too hastily. If she could change her mind, could see any possible
hope for the future, would she write to him? If he heard nothing from
her, he would understand what the silence meant. This was in brief the
substance of the letter, but the words had a passionate, unrestrained
intensity which showed they had been written by a man of strong nature
overwrought by suffering and excitement.

He was here, in the very hotel. Might she not write to him? Might she
not send him some sort of message write just a word of indefinite hope
which would comfort and relieve herself as well as him? "If I do not
hear from you, I shall understand what your silence means." Ah! But
would he understand? What had she said this morning to him? Scarcely
anything the merest broken bits of sentences, the poorest, coldest
confession of love.

Her writing case lay open on the table beside the bed with an unfinished
letter to Aunt Jean, begun before they had started for Fiesole. She
snatched up paper and pen, and trembling so much that she could scarcely
support herself she wrote two brief lines.

"Darling, I love you, and always must love you, first and best."

Then she lay back again exhausted, looking at the poor little weak words
which would not contain a thousandth part of the love in heart. Yet,
though the words were true, would they perhaps convey a wrong meaning
to him? Ought she to se