go out together, she looked at the other
portrait to see if she were "any nearer educated up to it." It seemed to
her she was, a little bit.

She started to dress. Being given to homely rather than poetic fancies,
she subsequently thought of herself as having been, during the process
of making herself fine for the afternoon drive and call, like some Cape
Cod young one trotting happily along with her tin pail full of
blueberries, just before a big dog sprang out of the roadside tangle and
jostled the pail out of her hand, so that all the berries were
spilled....

Even as she was buttoning her gloves a letter came for her with a
parcel. All rosy with delight, she quickly found in her purse a reward
for Gaetano, the bringer. Without too much hurry, like a person not
eager to shorten a solid enjoyment, she opened the letter. It did not
strike her as surprising, certainly not as ominous, that Gerald should
write when he might expect to see her so soon. She read:

This is the fourth letter, dearest Aurora, that I have written you since
waking, after a very bad night, in such a black humor that you would
know I am quite myself again and life has resumed for me its natural
colors. I destroyed those letters one after the other because, although
written with the effort of my whole being to be what you call sweet,
they sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now whatever I write I
shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I shall not
have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised.
And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the
reasons there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put
into words that I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but
an offensive manner. Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient;
permit him not to go into them. Just--don't come.

Alas! that cannot be all. I have the vision of your puzzled face. Well,
then, it is for yourself, in part. I have no excuse for profiting by a
kindness that may be harmful to you. It is my duty to regard for you the
conventions you are big-heartedly willing to disregard. I deplore the
fact that I was ever so weak as to forget it.

But it is also for myself, who must not further be demoralized and
spoiled.

I must not, moreover, be laid further under obligations of gratitude,
the less, my dear Aurora, that gratitude is not precisely what I feel.
No. I so little dote upon life tha