did. But from her answering
communications, though he drew comfort, he got no hope.

It was Rose herself who began this correspondence, within a month of her
arrival in New York. And Rodney, when he finished reading her letter,
tore it to pieces and flung it into the fire, in a transport of
disappointment and anger. The sight of her writing on the envelope had
brought his heart into his mouth, of course. And when his shaking
fingers had got it open and he saw that it indeed contained a letter
from her, beginning "Dear Rodney," and signed "Rose," the wild surge of
hope that swept over him actually turned him giddy, so that it was two
or three minutes before he could read it.

But the thing ran like another instalment of the talk they had had in
Dubuque. She knew he had been distressed over the shabbiness of her
surroundings, knocking about with that road company, and she was afraid
that in spite of the assurance she had then given him, he was still
worried about her. She was sure he'd be glad to know that she'd quit the
stage for good, as an active performer on it, at least; that she was
earning an excellent salary, fifty dollars a week, doing a highly
congenial kind of work that had good prospects of advancement in it. She
had a very comfortable little apartment (she gave him the address of it)
and was living in a way that--she had written "even Harriet," but
scratched this out--Frederica, for example, would consider entirely
respectable. So he needn't feel another moment's anxiety about her.
She'd have written sooner, but had wanted to get fully settled in her
new job and be sure she was going to be able to keep it, in order that
she might have something definitely reassuring to tell him. And she
hoped he and the babies were well.

It was not until hours afterward, when the letter was an
indistinguishable fluff of white ash in the fireplace, that it occurred
to him that it had no satirical intent whatever and that the purpose of
it had been, quite simply, what it had pretended to be; namely, to
reassure him and put an end to his anxieties.

As he had read it in the revulsion from that literally sickening hope of
his, it had seemed about the most mordant piece of irony that had ever
been launched against him. The assumption of it had seemed to be that he
was the most pitiable snob in the world; that all he'd cared for had
been that she'd disgraced him by going on the stage. He'd be glad to
know that she was once mo