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 some familiar handwriting but stamped with a strange postmark.

"Are they better cold?"

''I give up, I give up. It's no use. I can't even think. There's some sort of veil, mist, between us. He is a kind of god. He's brightness, beauty. Every movement he makes is a revelation and a question. How can I speak to him when all I want is to love him. There's nothing earthy, nothing gross about this. It's lovelier than anything I ever dreamed of. And if I tried to tell any one it would sound like tawdry farce. . . .''

Dimly she divined what lay between them, what always lies between men and gods, making them such embarrassed companions—the whole of life, the actual functions of living; the sense of absurdity (enemy of all tender beauty); trained necessities for silence, that darken the intuitions of the soul.

''It's as impossible as—as the New Testament. I feel like Christmas Eve: there's a new Me being born. You can't have a Nativity without pangs. And not even any one to bring me frankincense and myrrh. . . .''

She stopped, picked one of the late rosebuds, and put it in his lapel. She checked a frightened impulse to tell him that she named the baby Rose