My mind was divided between despondency and anger. I pictured her enjoying herself with a houseful of her own and Gerald’s friends, while I was forgotten. Of course there was no particular reason why she should remember me. Still, the irony of those foolish New Year’s wishes might almost have been intentional had the whole letter not been so thoughtless. She knew well enough how happy I must be now, stuck in this wretched hole by myself; and I asked myself how anybody could be so completely devoid of imagination, of sympathy, even of tact? I began to compose a letter to be written to-morrow, a letter expressing what I felt. I imagined her reading it in the midst of her friends, and realizing how she had wounded me. I tossed and turned till I was almost in a fever. Sleep was out of the question, for I knew it must be nearly morning already, and I had half a mind to get up and dress.... When I opened my eyes it was broad daylight. I sprang out of bed and hurried into my clothes. The first thing after breakfast I sat down to write my letter of reproach, and wrote it at furious speed, a fire burning in my soul. Yet when I came to read it over, it seemed childish and stilted, and in my haste I had left out so many words and mis-spelt so many others that I was obliged to make a fair copy of the whole. This I posted, but had two days more of impatience before a reply reached me. When it came, it had the effect of turning away my anger. Katherine seemed really sorry; at any rate she said she was. She told me that she cared far more for me than for any of the people I imagined she found so delightful, and that I might have known this by now, even if her letters _had_ been short. She said it had been horrid of her to write such a miserable scrawl, but that, if she had guessed I should mind it so much, she would have written me a whole book. I sat down to reply at once, but I cannot account for the unfortunate tone my letter took. It was morbid and self-conscious, without being in the least frank. I begged her forgiveness; I made a parade of a melancholy that bore no resemblance to the kind of melancholy I really felt; I talked vaguely about not being as good as she believed me to be, and the whole production was a little sickening. I don’t know, or rather I do know, what she made of it. She replied that she had never for a moment thought me good, and that she should prefer not to hear from me at all to getting letters like the last I had written. It was not, perhaps, extremely sympathetic, but I knew well enough myself I had done the wrong thing. My letter had been odiously self-conscious. I had accused myself of not being good, but what on earth did that mean? It might mean that I went into the pantry at night and stole the jam! CHAPTER XXXIII