Yours sincerely, ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. You may scold me as much as you like, but you are not to comfort me. Do not make the mistake, I earnestly beg you, of supposing that I want to be comforted. LXVIII Galgenberg, Jan. 13th. Dear Mr. Anstruther,--Just a line to tell you that I have recovered, and you are not to take my letter yesterday too seriously. I woke up this morning perfectly normal, and able to look out on the day before me with the usual interest. Then something very nice happened: my translation of Papa's book didn't come back, but instead arrived an urbane letter expressing a kind of reluctant willingness, if you can imagine the mixture, to publish it. What do you think of that? The letter, it is true, goes on to suggest, still with urbanity, that no doubt no one will ever buy it, but promises if ever any one does to send us a certain just portion of what was paid for it. 'Observe, Rose-Marie,' said Papa when his first delight had calmed, 'the unerring instinct with which the English, very properly called a nation of shopkeepers, instantly recognize the value of a good thing when they see it. Consider the long years during which I have vainly beaten at the doors of the German public, and compare its deafness with the quick response of our alert and admirable cousins across the Channel. Well do I know which was the part that specially appealed to this man's business instinct--' And he mentioned, while my guilty ears burned crimson, a chapter of statistics, the whole of which I had left out. Yours sincerely, ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. LXIX Galgenberg, Jan. 14th. Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I see no use whatever in a friend if one cannot tell him about one's times of gloom without his immediately proposing to do the very thing one doesn't want him to do, which is to pay one a call. Your telegram has upset me, you see, into a reckless use of the word one, a word I spend hours sometimes endeavoring to circumvent, and which I do circumvent if I am in good bodily and spiritual health, but the moment my vitality is lowered, as it is now by your telegram, I cease to be either strong enough or artful enough to dodge it. There are four of it in that sentence: I fling them to you in a handful, only remarking that they are your fault, not mine.