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: "DEAR LADY: 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." Bambi laid her cheek against the poor, hurt letter, and cried. "My poor, bungling Jarvis, how I must have hurt you!" She read it again, and all at once light flooded in. "Why, it's Richard, of course! He thinks I am in love with Richard! The dear old goose! He sees so little and sees that crooked." She went in search of him, determined to tell the whole foolish story, to explain the imaginary obstacles that divided them. But he was not to be found, so the impulse died, and she determined to play the farce out to its end, and now, that she knew the core of the whole situation, she could make it count for their final readjustment. She wrote him at once: "MY DEAR JARVIS: At last I feel that there is truth between us. I have suspected that you were not happy in your love life. But I wanted not to pry into locked chambers. Now we can be glad of the bond that lies between us, for I, too, go heart hungry through the days. "I have not spoken to you of my home, or my husband, but now that you have become such a part of my thought life, I feel no disloyalty in the truth. "My husband is a man who has never felt the want of affection. He is so self-centred in his devotion to his work that I have always been shut out of his heart. At first this did not trouble me, for I was ambitious, too. But so many things have happened to develop me this last year, to awaken me to my full womanhood! "I have had to face, as you do, the ache of an unwanted love, tossed back to eat its way like a corrosive acid. Once, not long ago, I thought, perhaps, things were going to change for me. I thought he wanted me. But now I have come to know that it is to another woman he turns for sympathy and understanding.