"The day is very still. It is grey and tired. It seems old as if the sun had risen a long time ago, and it is too tired to go on. It seems standing there before me so tired. The clouds hang in the air very still. The grey light creeps into the house, and the house is still like the day. All is still and grey, even my thoughts. Only the clock moves, and the fire. Only the fire shines in the greyness. I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the red of the fire in the greyness; I do not know why it is such a sorrowful thing to hear the clock ticking very slowly, or why the rustle of the fire makes me know I am lonely. If my dear mother was with me she could interprit it to me like dreams in the bible. But then if my mother was with me, I think this grey day would seem shining. I think the still would only be quiitness if my mother was with me."
As Sophy read these last words she raised them to her lips. It seemed to her that Bobby need not fear about becoming "a author anyhow." She could not think that it was only mother-love that made "A Grey Day" seem unusual to her.
Then she opened Amaldi's letter. Here, too, was an unexpected pleasure. She had found his letters charming from the first, but in this one it was as if he had put aside a certain reserve that she had always noticed before. He might have been talking to her over a log fire at Le Vigne—— Or, no, she corrected herself with a smile—never had Amaldi "talked" to her with the ease, the fulness, the alternate gaiety and depth with which he wrote to her in this long, delightful letter. She sat holding it in her hand when she had finished reading it, trying to recall clearly his dark, irregular face and olive eyes—the sound of his voice. And she smiled again, thinking of the Corinthians' opinion of Paul: ".... His letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; ... but his speech is contemptible." "Dear Amaldi...." she thought, still smiling. "I wonder how it is that you are such a silent man as a rule, and yet can write such perfectly adorable letters?"
She put his letter with Bobby's and laid them both away. For a long time she stood at her bedroom window looking out over the snowy wilds towards the sunset. The afterglow burned red through the inky pines. The snow shone a queer, witch-like blue in the twilight. Sophy saw it all without seeing. She was thinking that there were beautiful things in her life still ... that she ought to be very grateful ... that after a while she ought even to be happy in them....
But as she gazed at the smouldering watchfires of the west, Bobby's words came back to her: "I do not know why it makes me so sad to see the red of the fire in the greyness...."
XLV
Sophy told Miss Pickett all about Amaldi. Sometimes she would read her extracts from his letters when they were unusually delightful.
One day, towards spring, when Sophy had been thus reading to her, she said thoughtfully:
"Sophy, child—you aren't afraid of preparing a new unhappiness for yourself?"