In her mail there was a note from Querida asking her to stop for a few moments at his studio that afternoon, several business communications, and a long letter from Mrs. Collis which she read lying in bed, one hand resting on her aching temples:
"MY DEAR Miss WEST: Our interview this morning has left me with a somewhat confused sense of indebtedness to you and an admiration and respect for your character which I wished very much to convey to you this morning, but which I was at a loss to express.
"You are not only kind and reasonable, but so entirely unselfish that my own attitude in this unhappy matter has seemed to me harsh and ungracious.
"I went to you entertaining a very different idea of you, and very different sentiments from the opinion which I took away with me. I admit that my call on you was not made with any agreeable anticipations; but I was determined to see you and learn for myself what manner of woman had so disturbed us all.
"In justice to you—in grateful recognition of your tact and gentleness, I am venturing to express to you now my very thorough respect for you, my sense of deep obligation, and my sympathy—which I am afraid you may not care for.
"That it would not be suitable for a marriage to take place between my brother and yourself is, it appears, as evident to you as it is to his own family. Yet, will you permit me to wish that it were otherwise? I do wish it; I wish that the circumstances had made such a marriage possible. I say this to you in spite of the fact that we have always expected my brother to marry into a family which has been intimate with our own family for many generations. It is a tribute to your character which I am unwilling to suppress; which I believe I owe to you, to say that, had circumstances been different, you might have been made welcome among us.
"The circumstances of which I speak are of an importance to us, perhaps exaggerated, possibly out of proportion to the fundamental conditions of the situation. But they are conditions which our family has never ignored. And it is too late for us to learn to ignore them now.
"I think that you will feel—I think that a large part of the world might consider our attitude toward such a woman as you have shown yourself to be, narrow, prejudiced, provincial. The modern world would scarcely arm us with any warrant for interfering in a matter which a man nearly thirty is supposed to be able to manage for himself. But my father and mother are old, and they will never change in their beliefs and prejudices inherited from their parents, who, in turn, inherited their beliefs.
"It was for them more than for myself—more even than for my brother—that I appealed to you. The latter end of their lives should not be made unhappy. And your generous decision assures me that it will not be made so.
"As for myself, my marriage permitted me an early enfranchisement from the obsolete conventional limits within which my brother and I were brought up.