“I don’t say it would last forever; nothing does, for that matter. But at least you would live for a little while—come down off the unearthly plane you roost on now. Whatever you went through, it would leave you all-round developed and philosophical—in a frame of mind to see and accept life as it is. You need hardening. I was born hard. You’re as soft as mush, for all you look like those marble bores in the Vatican, and as romantic as if you’d spent all your life in a castle in a wood with the drawbridge up. I believe you even keep a diary——”
“Diary——” Ora sat up straight.
“I’ve seen and heard you writing by the yard, late at night, mostly. It wasn’t letters, because we always get those off our chest just after breakfast—fine system. Unless you’re a budding author——”
“They were letters!” Ora, who was strung up to a high pitch and merely smoking for relief, felt a defiant impulse to indulge in the impudence of confession. “I’ve written yards and yards of letters to a man——”
“What? And you don’t send them off!”
“I don’t know him.”
“Good lord, what next? An ideal, I suppose.”
“Yes—that’s it.”
“Do you mean you never saw him—anyone to suggest him—it? What gender has an ideal, anyhow?”
“I saw him—talked with him, once. I said I didn’t know him.”