Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/387

Rh to my own desk. It's stuffed so full of Paul's letters that I haven't room for a thing in it."

She seized a pen, and began scratching away.

"If you have any advice to offer," she said, while she was writing, "speak now. It's your last chance."

"If you love him," said Miss Porter deliberately, "tell him yes. If you do not love him, tell him no."

"Thank you," laughed Edith. "Oh, wise and upright Ph.D., you have made it so very clear and simple. I see my way perfectly."

At the end of ten minutes Edith's voice broke the silence.

"Do you want to hear this?"

Miss Porter signified her willingness.

Edith read aloud, slowly and impressively:

There was silence for a moment.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Edith asked.

'I think it sounds a little—cold," said Miss Porter.

"Well, you can't make that sort of letter sound very warm and effusive," Edith replied calmly; "but now how's this?"

She took up a sheet of blue note paper, and began reading aloud:

Dear, dear Paul; she got no further, however, and after a moment's hesitation, she handed the note to Miss Porter, who quickly read this brief note upon the blue paper:

"But why two?" asked Miss Porter, with a puzzled frown, as she gave back the note, "and which are you going to send?"

"I don't know yet," she said. "I have until five to decide, and I want them both ready, so. that I shall be perfectly free to think up to the last minute, and then I am prepared for whatever I decide upon. Now I am going off by myself, so that I can have it perfectly quiet to think."

She disappeared, and five minutes later the "Du und Du Waltz" awoke the echoes of the quiet apartment. Miss Porter recollected Edith's saying that when she and Paul were children together, in San Francisco, they used to waltz to the "Du und Du," and Miss Porter concluded that playing this waltz was Edith's way of thinking.

Ten minutes later the "Du und Du" died a harmonic death, and twenty minutes later Edith appeared in the study in her bicycle suit.

"I haven't made up my mind yet," she announced. "But I am going out on my wheel. I can always think better when I am whizzing along in the open air. You can't think, you know, all stewed up in a little apartment."

She was buttoning her jacket, and tucking in the long ends of a blue Liberty scarf which she had around her neck, as she spoke.

"Are your eyes good?" she demanded abruptly.

"I can tell a hawk from a handsaw," Miss Porter replied.

"Yes, but at what range? Come here to the window," she commanded.