“Oh, goody goody, Peter!” she cried. “How joyous! Can it be possible that my bungling is coming out right for Marian and right for you?”
“And right for you, Linda?” inquired Peter lightly.
“Sure, right for me,” said Linda eagerly. “Of course it’s right for me when it’s right for you and Marian. And since it’s not my secret alone I don’t think it would be quite honourable to tell Donald about it. What hurts Marian’s heart or heals it is none of his business. He doesn’t even know her.”
“All right then, Linda,” said Peter, rising, “give me the letters and bring me the machine and the paper. Give me the joyous details and tell me when I am expected to send in my first letter in propria persona?”
“Oh, Peter,” cried Linda, beaming on him, “oh, Peter, you are a rock! I do put my trust in you.”
“Then God help me,” said Peter, “for whatever happens, your trust in me shall not be betrayed, Linda.”
CHAPTER XXIX
Katy Unburdens Her Mind
Possibly because she wished to eliminate herself from the offices of Nicholson and Snow for a few days, possibly because her finely attuned nature felt the call, Marian Thorne boarded a train that carried her to Los Angeles. She stepped from it at ten o’clock in the morning, and by the street-car route made her way to Lilac Valley. When she arrived she realized that she could not see Linda before, possibly, three in the afternoon. She entered a restaurant, had a small lunch box packed, and leaving her dressing case, she set off down the valley toward the mountains. She had need of their strength, their quiet and their healing. To the one particular spot where she had found comfort in Lilac Valley her feet led her. By paths of her own, much overgrown for want of recent usage, she passed through the cultivated fields, left the roadway, and began to climb. When she reached the stream flowing down the rugged hillside, she stopped to rest for a while, and her mind was in a tumult. In one minute she was seeing the bitterly disappointed face of a lonely, sensitive man whose first wound had been re-opened by the making of another possibly quite as deep; and at the next her heart was throbbing because Linda had succeeded in transferring the living Peter to paper.
The time had come when Marian felt that she would know the personality embodied in the letters she had been receiving; and in the past few days her mind had been fixing tenaciously upon Peter Morrison. And the feeling concerning which she had written Linda had taken possession of her. Wealth did not matter; position did not matter. Losing the love of a good man did not matter. But the mind and the heart and the personality behind the letters she had been receiving did matter. She thought long and seriously. When at last she arose she had arrived at the conclusion that she had done the right thing, no matter whether the wonderful letters she had received went on and offered her love or not, no matter about anything. She must merely live and do the best she could, until the writer of those letters chose to disclose himself and say what purpose he had in mind when he wrote them.