the semicircular
open porch protecting the side-door, where she had been writing on a
pad. Though so near the roadway, a high growth of shrubs screened her
from all but the passers up and down Willoughby's Lane. At this time of
year they were relatively few, many of the residents of County Street
having already gone to the seaside or the mountains. Lois enjoyed the
seclusion thus afforded her, and the tranquillity. The garden and her
poorer neighbors gave an outlet to her need for physical activity, while
in the solitude of the house and in that wider solitude created by the
absence of all the Willoughbys and Mastermans something within her was
being healed. It was being healed--but healed in a way that left her
changed. The change was manifest in what she said when, with the pad on
her knee again, she began to write.

"I am deeply moved, dear Thor, by your last letter from Colorado
Springs, and would gladly say something adequate in response to it. When
I can I will--if I ever can. As to that the decisive word must be with
time. I cannot hurry it. I can give you no assurance now. Now I
feel--but why should I repeat it? An illusion once dispelled can rarely
be brought back. Still less can you replace it by reality. What we are
looking for is a substitute for love. You may have found it--but I have
not. I can accept your definition of love as a giving out, a pouring
forth, a desire to do and to contribute; but it is precisely here that I
fail to respond to the test. There is something in me stagnated or
dammed up. My heart feels like a well that has gone dry. I have nothing
to yield. I understand what Rosie Fay said to me the day when I talked
to her on Duck Rock: 'I'm empty; I've given all I had to give.' It was
less blameworthy on her part than on mine, because she, poor little
thing, had given so much and I so little. And yet my supply seems to be
exhausted. It must have been thin and shallow to begin with. As I feel
at present it would take a new creation to replenish it.

"With regard to my calling forth what is best in you, dear Thor--well,
any one would do that or anything. You're one of those who have nothing
but the best to offer. Do you know what Uncle Sim said of you last
night?--'Thor is always on the side of the angels--and, though he makes
mistakes, they'll rescue him.' They will, dear Thor; I'm sure of it.
They may rescue us both--even if at present I don't see how."

Having written this much, she pause