“No,” she said, half to herself, half to Jethro, “I don’t feel.” She waited a moment, let that flow of recollections rush on. Nothing touched her. It had been another woman--a dogged, shameful, spiritless creature. She repeated devotionally, as if she had been kneeling in a great church, swept by religious frenzy: “I thank God. I don’t feel.” * * * * * “Beaufort Street, May 24. “MY DEAREST PAMELA: Tim and I will be delighted to spend all June at Folly Corner, as you suggest: you’ll really see Tim at last! “We have let this house, and think of settling in the country. It will not be the real thing, as you have it. We shall go to one of those intellectual settlements with a good railway service to town; a theater train once a week. We shall live on a hill; there will be a splendid view from our windows. We shall have to pay for that view; we shall ask our friends down to look at it; we shall see it every morning--rave over it, become callous to it, abuse it--want to murder it. A true English home is in a hollow, like Folly Corner. I shall have to content myself with the hard monotony of a pine wood--after Sussex oak! We shall belong to a coterie--everybody will be an artistic something. Everybody will flatter and hate his neighbor. “I want to see the baby. Of course you’ll call him Jethro. I can understand your disquietude at Gainah’s fondness for him. “Your letter was too domestic altogether. _Do_ remember that a ‘good manager’ degenerates into a shrew after thirty. “Of course your husband is trying--it is a way they have: a man is the most difficult of all domestic pets. Never mind his occasional morose moods; never mind his attempts at domestic economy. When a man decides on domestic economy he smokes a shilling cigar while he lectures his wife on the sinful extravagance of afternoon tea. A wise woman gives him his head on such occasions, and never varies her course. “You are very much to be envied; our life is a struggle to make both ends meet. Tim’s book of essays, which made such a splash last year, has been the ruin of him. He is a melancholy object lesson--a man ruined by press notices. Still, that is not a fate likely to befall you or Mr. Jayne. My poor Tim no longer has confidence in anything he does. I tell him--without making the least impression on him--that a thing doesn’t cease to be clever because you’ve found out the way to do it. He’s versatile--that is his stumbling-block. To succeed, you must be superlatively skillful at one thing, and a perfect fool at everything else. “So Nancy has won the literary prize in the _Liddleshorn Herald_ competition--and dear Mrs. Turle has justified her opinion. “As Chalcraft and his wife are dead, of course there will be a sale. Buy me the oak chair, if I am not present to buy it myself.