"Come and help me then," the doctor said, "and it won't sound so much like scolding."
"I want Mort's letter—to show to Viva," the girl answered, and slipped out with it.
She sat with Vivian on the stiff little sofa in the back room; the arms of the two girls were around one another, and they read the letter together. More than six months had passed since his last one.
It was not much of a letter. Vivian took it in her own hands and went through it again, carefully. The "Remember me to Viva—unless she's married," at the end did not seem at all satisfying. Still it might mean more than appeared—far more. Men were reticent and proud, she had read. It was perfectly possible that he might be concealing deep emotion under the open friendliness. He was in no condition to speak freely, to come back and claim her. He did not wish her to feel bound to him. She had discussed it with Mrs. St. Cloud, shrinkingly, tenderly, led on by tactful, delicate, questions, by the longing of her longing heart for expression and sympathy.
"A man who cannot marry must speak of marriage—it is not honorable," her friend had told her.
"Couldn't he—write to me—as a friend?"
And the low-voiced lady had explained with a little sigh that men thought little of friendship with women. "I have tried, all my life, to be a true and helpful friend to men, to such men as seemed worthy, and they so often—misunderstood."
The girl, sympathetic and admiring, thought hotly of how other people misunderstood this noble, lovely soul; how they even hinted that she "tried to attract men," a deadly charge in Bainville.
"No," Mrs. St. Cloud had told her, "he might love you better than all the world—yet not write to you—till he was ready to say 'come.' And, of course, he wouldn't say anything in his letters to his aunt."
So Vivian sat there, silent, weaving frail dreams out of "remember me to Viva—unless she's married." That last clause might mean much.