His publisher's name was on the envelope, so he put the rag down, wondering if there was any important news. At the sight of an enclosure, and a printed slip conveying Mr. Norton's compliments, he said "damn," for enclosures usually proved to be circulars from Press-cutting agencies. He opened Bee's letter with little interest, and fingers that smelt of turpentine.
The feeling roused in him by the first lines was a very commonplace one—the gratified flutter of a young artist who is praised—but after a few seconds the letter affected him more subtly. It was not merely that "Miss H. Sorrenford," who desired a reply, admired his work; so did more authoritative critics. Nor was it simply that he was thankful to her for owning it; he had been thankful to them too. It wasn't only that her appreciation was intelligent; a few of the criticisms had been more than that. The arresting fact was that he was stirred by curiosity about her. For once a woman permitted him a glimpse of her soul, and the loneliness of his life made the strange event more fascinating. He wondered who she was, and how she looked, and was humiliated to reflect how disenchanted she would be if she could see him. He read the letter twice before he put it in his pocket, and smiled again at the diffidence of her beginning. What was the picture in her mind—the seclusion of a study, a secretary sorting the poet's morning mail? He regarded his surroundings ruefully.
He thought he would reply to her on the morrow, but the curiosity she had wakened in him did not subside; on the contrary, her letter kept recurring to him during the day, and he pondered what he should say. He was young enough to quake lest his response should dethrone him. Because the matter was engrossing he sat down to answer her the same afternoon, and he found himself writing at much greater length than he had intended.
As he took the second sheet of paper, the doubt arose whether such prolixity would not cheapen him in her view. Unaccustomed to a crown, he was of course afraid of its slipping off. He left the table, and revolved a polite and colourless note that seemed more consistent with the position to which she elevated him; but he wasn't satisfied with it. To assist his meditations he re-read her letter, and now he realised that at the back of his mind lay the desire to hear from her again. The note would frustrate it. He returned to the table, and went on with the fifth page. By dint of squeezing his wisdom a good deal he contrived to avoid encroaching on page six.
Late on the next day but one, he received a few lines of acknowledgment from her. They were grateful, but they provided no reason for his addressing her any more. He was chagrined, and it would have astonished Bee much to know how often David Lee's thoughts turned to her.
At the end of a week she was sufficiently astonished; she recognised the writing on the envelope and the package a shade incredulously. He begged her acceptance of his first book, which he hoped she would like as well as his second. He even hinted that he awaited her opinion of it with considerable eagerness. She thanked him by return of post, and when another week had gone by, her opinion was expressed. She had written with a faltering pen this time, because she did not like his first book so well as his second, and was perturbed by the necessity for saying so.
David put down the letter discomfited. He had been looking for it every day, and the knowledge that he had been impatient made him angrier still. He was incensed with himself for having provoked the disappointment. Why had he sent her the book? The tepidity of her praise! Never a superlative. Besides, in parts she failed to see his meaning. After all, she was less spiritual than he had thought her!
If her earliest letter had stirred his imagination less deeply, the correspondence which he had rescued once would now have been allowed to die; as it was, he wrote to her not long afterwards, defending himself from her criticism, and explaining a passage which he said she misunderstood. It was manifest that he was wounded. She replied—evidently abased by his displeasure—that she had not presumed to "criticise." So does humility juggle with words. The poet was appeased; and then mortified to feel that he had been a churl. He scribbled a line of deprecation. Also, angling for further favours, he tied an inquiry to the end of it.
Thus the correspondence entered upon its second stage. In its second stage they exchanged letters at longer intervals, but he ceased to invent pretexts for asking her to reply, and she signed herself, "Sincerely yours, H. Sorrenford," instead of "Yours very truly." When the spring came, he complained: "It is nearly a month since I heard from you—the bareness of the breakfast-table affronts me every morning," and Bee, who had been the prey of scruples, put them from her, and wrote again.
They were wholly natural, the letters that had begun to mean so much; they would have seemed unnatural only if they had been published, with an editor's "Foreword" proclaiming that the writers were strangers to each other. David wrote on impulse in the hours when he was loneliest; Bee responded gladly when the temptation to confess herself was too strong to be denied. There was no news in the letters; hers especially were poor in facts—her thoughts about a book he had recommended to her, the impression of a ramble through the fields, seldom more. He was surprised sometimes to reflect how little he knew about the woman whom at other times he seemed to know so well. It surprised the woman that she could unveil her soul with such audacity to a man she had not met.