e. He thought, "I wish she
could have been in long ago, when I was there. It would have made a
difference. Some one between us. We used to work on one another's
nerves. That was our trouble. Pretty little Effie! How jolly it would
have been! Like a jolly little sister."

He puckered his brows a little as he read on to Mabel's further
reflections on the new enterprise: "Of course she's not our class but
she's quite ladylike and on the whole I think it just as well not to
have a lady. It might be very difficult sometimes to give orders to any
one of one's own standing."

He didn't quite like that; but after all it was only just Mabel's way of
looking at things. It was the jolliest possible idea. He wrote back
enthusiastically about it and always after Effie was installed inquired
after her in his letters.

But Mabel did not reply to these inquiries.

III

He was writing regularly to Nona and regularly hearing from her. He
never could quite make out where she was, addressing her only to her
symbol in the Field post-office. She was car driving and working very
long hours. There was one letter that he never posted but of the
existence of which he permitted himself to tell her. "I carry it about
with me always in my Pay-book. It is addressed to you. If ever I get
outed it will go to you. In it I have said everything that I have never
said to you but that you know without my saying it. There'll be no harm
in your hearing it from my own hand if I'm dead. I keep on adding to it.
Every time we come back into rest, I add a little more. It all could be
said in the three words we have never said to one another. But all the
words that I could ever write would never say them to you as I feel
them. There! I must say no more of it. I ought not to have said so
much."

And she wrote, "Marko, I can read your letter, every line of it. I lie
awake, Marko, and imagine it to myself--word by word, line by line; and
word by word, line by line, in the same words and in the same lines, I
answer it. So when you read it to yourself for me, read it for yourself
from me. Oh, Marko--

"That I ever shall have cause to read it in actual fact I pray God never
to permit. But so many women are praying for so many men, and daily--.
So I am praying beyond that: for myself; for strength, if anything
should happen to you, to turn my heart to God. You see, then I can say,
'God keep you--in any amazement.'"

IV

Early in December he wrote to Mabe