_D_uring all this year of wandering on the part of Dorothy Edmonia did her duty as a correspondent with conspicuous fidelity. To her letters far more than to Dorothy’s own, Arthur was indebted for exact information as to Dorothy’s doings and Dorothy’s surroundings and Dorothy’s self. For Dorothy’s reticence concerning herself grew upon her as the months went on. She wrote freely and with as much apparent candor and fulness as ever, but she managed never to reveal herself in the old familiar fashion. Not that there was anything of estrangement in her words or tone, for there was nothing of the kind. It was only that she manifested a certain shyness and reserve concerning her own thought and feeling when these became intimate,--a reserve like that which every woman instinctively practises concerning details of the toilet. A woman may frankly admit to a man that she finds comfort in the use of a little powder, but she does not want him to see the powder box and puff. She may mention her shoe-strings quite without hesitation, but if one of them comes unfastened, she will climb two flights of stairs rather than let him see her readjust it. In somewhat that way Dorothy at this time wrote to Arthur. If she read a book or saw a picture that pleased her, she would write to him, telling him quite all her external thought concerning it; but if it inspired any emotion of a certain sort in her, she had nothing whatever to say concerning that. In one particular, too, she deliberately abstained from telling him even of her pursuits and ambitions. He was left to hear of that from Edmonia, who wrote: “Apparently we are destined to remain here in Paris during the rest of our stay abroad. For Dorothy has a new craze which she will in no wise relinquish or abate. For that, you, sir, are responsible, for you planted the seed that are now producing this luxuriant growth of quite unfeminine character. You taught Dorothy the rudiments of chemistry and physics. You awakened in her a taste for such studies which has grown into an uncontrollable passion.