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298 “Where would I run to?”

“You might go look up the author-lady you’re so interested in,” she remarked, wickedly.

He made no answer to that.

The noon mail brought Bambi’s latest letter from Jarvis. All mail was brought immediately to her, so she had a chance to extract the telltale letters. Jarvis wrote:

“: Your letters are fast becoming a necessity to me. I look for them as eagerly as a boy. I find myself more and more absorbed in the ‘Francesca’ of your fancy, whom I feel sure is the essence of you. Is it not so?

“I am bitterly unhappy these days—lonely, as I have never been before. The emotional side of life has always been a closed book to me, one I disdained to read. So once my heart begins to call attention to itself, I suppose the more poignant will be my experience.

“I have lately come back from a long exile spent in a hideous place. I brought with me the first hunger for love I had ever known. But I found no answering need in the heart I turned to. I have been thrown back on myself, to eat my heart out, because I know now that it is my own fault. If I had tried sooner to make myself a lover, I would not have to resign that place to another man.

“Why do I pour these personal sorrows upon you, my Lady of Sympathy? I am heartsick for comfort. “Yours,“J.”