“Azalea Knox is a very pleasing and interesting young woman of a good deal of importance in the world, if she would only realize it,” she said. I looked at her a moment. “She’s not so very, very happy,” I said. The tears came in her eyes, and her eyebrows were not pointed at all. Really, Aunt Lorena is a dear. You just have to break through her crust. The only trouble is that the crust grows over, and you have to keep breaking through. It makes you feel a little like an Eskimo, fishing. “I am truly sorry,” she said. “But I think if she is a really obedient and patient girl that some day she will be very happy, and that she will thank the friends who now seem to her to be afflicting her.” We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then I ventured: “Then you really think I ought not to send anything to Keefe? Not even this terrible drawing of a cat? Not even to make him laugh and—and hold me in contempt?” She laughed at that. “Not for any reason at all,” she said. “Then, Aunt Lorena, let me send word just once more—only once. It will be the end.” “The end?” “I will never direct another envelope of any sort to him till he writes to me. If he has given his word, he will not do that until—” “Until?” Her eyebrows were Gothic arches again. “Until we find, beyond all question, that we cannot live apart.” “Piffle,” she said. “One can live without anyone. It is a mere question of making up one’s mind.” I sent Keefe the terrible little picture of the cat. “Keefe,” I wrote him, “please excuse me for being a bold-faced minx. I must be one, or I wouldn’t have sent you poems and violets and things. Kindly observe this drawing of a cat. It is a cat, I don’t care what you say. She looks as I feel, somewhat cramped. But she is a good cat, and I am a good, obedient girl. I shall waste no more stamps on you. I am going to England, and I am commanded to be very happy. So, since I am obedient, pray think of me as being not only happy but gay.” I signed my name to it—just “Azalea”—and sent it off. Now I shall write no more. _Farewell_, _Azalea_. P.S. I wish you could see my traveling veil. It looks like a peacock’s breast. Clothes are nice, aren’t they? I never realized before how nice they are. CHAPTER XII A TRAVEL LOG London! London! London! April tenth. _Carin_, _my dear_: