re "respectable."

Well--this was the question which, as I said, he did not ask himself
until hours later--wasn't she justified in believing that? Certainly
that night, in her little room on North Clark Street, he'd given her
reason enough for thinking so. But later, in Dubuque--well, hadn't he
quoted Harriet to her? Hadn't he offered to help her as a favor to
himself, because he couldn't endure it that she should live like this?
Had he exhibited anything to her at all in their two encounters, but an
uncontrolled animal lust and a perfectly contemptible vanity?

He bitterly regretted having destroyed the letter. But the tone of it,
he was sure, except for that well merited jibe about Harriet, which had
been erased, was kindly. Yet he had acted once more, like a spoiled
child about it.

Could he write and thank her? In Dubuque she had asked him not to come
back. Did that prohibition cover writing? Her letter did not explicitly
revoke it. She asked him no questions. But he remembered now a
post-script, which, at the time of reading, he'd taken merely as a final
barb of satire. "I am still Doris Dane down here, of course," it had
read. If she hadn't meant that for a sneering assurance that his
precious name wasn't being taken in vain--and had he ever heard Rose
sneer at anybody?--what could have been the purpose of it except to make
sure that a letter from him wouldn't come addressed "Rose Aldrich," and
so fail to be delivered to her.

It was due only to luck that, in his first disappointment, he hadn't
destroyed her address with the letter. But she had duplicated it on the
flap of the envelope, and the envelope was not thrown in the fire.

He spent hours composing a reply. And the thing he finally sent off,
once it was committed to the post, seemed quite the worst of all his
efforts. His impulse was to send another on the heels of it. But he
waited a week, then wrote again. And this time, the stiffness of
self-consciousness was not quite so paralyzing. He managed to give her a
little real information about the condition of the twins and the
household. About himself, he stated that he was well, though busier than
he liked to be.

He experienced a very vague, faint satisfaction, two days later, over
the reflection that this letter was in her hands, and he came presently
to the audacious resolution that until she forbade him, he would go on
writing to her every week. She'd see that she needn't answer and it
would no d