For you must know that no woman in love ever enjoys her man's good looks! She loves him for so many other things besides beauty that she feels this demand is a needless cruelty—adding to her torture and making her love him the more. The only male beauty she can ungrudgingly adore is that which she cradles in her arms—the miniature of the Big Good Looks which have lured her and tormented her!
Then—just for the sake of keeping away from this drawer—I did different things to pass away the morning. I said good-by to the picture, then went into the library and looked up a word in the dictionary. I looked at the picture again after that—to make sure that it was still there—then I decided to wash my hair. But I changed my mind, for I was afraid the water might drip on the picture and ruin it. I looked up a bodkin and some blue baby ribbon—and forgot to gear up the corset-cover whose eyelets were gaping hungrily before my eyes. While I was trying to remember what one usually does with a bodkin and blue ribbon I looked at the picture again—and, well, if you have ever been there you can understand; and if you haven't no words could ever explain.
Then the telephone in the hall! I tried to keep away from it as hard as they say a murderer tries to keep away from the scene of his crime.
"I won't call him until afternoon," I kept telling myself. "It would be perfectly outrageous. I'll call him from the office—just about dusk, and——"
Then I began seeing things again—houses and English gardens, with children and schoolhouses in the background, and a smile on the face of Pope Gregory, the Somethingth, when he saw the Union Jack and Old Glory flying in peace above this vision—until I came to the office in time for the one o'clock staff meeting.
The first thing I saw there was a note lying on my desk. It bore no post-mark, so I knew that it must have come by messenger.
"What can he have said?" I thought, catching it up and weighing it in my hands. "And I wonder why he sent it here to the Herald office, instead of out home—and why he addressed it to Miss G. C. Christie, as if it were a business communication instead of to Miss Grace Chalmers Christie, and why——"
I looked at it again. It was surely from him, for it was written on traction company paper. I was glad of this, for I can forgive a man for anything—if he doesn't use fancy note-paper with his monogram in the corner.
I weighed it, and turned it over several times, and found a vague "Habana" fragrance about it—before I ran a hairpin under the flap and opened it. It ran as follows:
"My dear Miss Christie—