"This is a word—perhaps unwelcome, for I think I understand, dear friend, something of what you are feeling and of what you desire just now—a word of welcome to your garden of paradise. May there never be an angel with a flaming sword to keep the gate against you. Listen to the shepherds fluting, dream, or, better, live, as you are grandly capable of living, under the old olives of Sicily. Take your golden time boldly with both hands. Life may seem to most of us who think in the main a melancholy, even a tortured thing, but when it is not so for a while to one who can think as you can think, the power of thought, of deep thought, intensifies its glory. You will never enjoy as might a pagan, perhaps never as might a saint. But you will enjoy as a generous-blooded woman with a heart that only your friends—I should like to dare to say only one friend—know in its rare entirety. There is an egoist here, in the shadow of the mosques, who turns his face towards Mecca, and prays that you may never leave your garden. E. A."
"Does the Sicilian grandmother respond to the magic of the south?"
When she drew near to the end of this letter Hermione hesitated.
"He—there's something," she said, "that is too kind to me. I don't think I'll read it."
"Don't," said Delarey. "But it can't be too kind."
She saw the postscript and smiled.
"And quite at the end there's an allusion to you."
"I must read that."
And she read it.