“I want to tell you something. I tried to tell you yesterday, but somehow I couldn’t. It oughtn’t to be difficult, yet all this afternoon I’ve been writing to you in an exercise book, and crossing out, and re-phrasing, and putting in again as carefully and dissatisfiedly as if it were Opus 4. I wish it were, because then you’d be very much pleased with Madala Grey and forget the dreadful shock of Opus 3! I was always afraid you wouldn’t like it, and sorry, because I like it more than all my other work put together. Have you never even begun to guess why? But how should you, when I didn’t know myself until after it was finished? Coming events, I suppose. It’s quite true—one isn’t overtaken by fate: one prepares one’s own fate: one carries it about inside one, like a child. I hear you say—‘Can’t you come to the point?’ No, I can’t. Partly because I’m afraid of what you’ll say, because I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, and partly, selfishly, because there is a queer pleasure in beating about the bush that bears my flower. It’s too beautiful to pick straight away in one rough snatch of a sentence. Am I selfish? You’ve been so kind to me. I know you will be sorry and that troubles me. And yet—Anita, I am going to be married. You met him once in the churchyard at home, do you remember? I’ve seen him now and then when I took the children down there in the summer. He—— There’s something scratched out here,” said Anita. “I think we shall be happy. When you get accustomed to the idea I hope you will like him.” She paused. “Now what do you make of that?” said Anita. “It explains the expeditions with the children,” said Mr. Flood. “They were always too—philanthropic, to be quite—eh?” “Oh, but she began those outings ages ago,” said Miss Howe quickly. “Besides,” said Anita, “she didn’t go every week that summer. That’s the point. She told me herself that she was so busy that she had to get help—one of those mission women. Now why was she so busy?” “Diversions in the country _and_ attractions in town?” said Mr. Flood. “It all takes time.” Anita nodded. “You think that? So do I. _And_ attractions in town! Exactly! At any rate I shall make that the big chapter, the convincing chapter, of the _Life_. I think I shall be able to prove that that summer was the climax of her affairs. I grant you that she met Carey that summer, but as she says herself, a few times only. We must look nearer home than Carey.” “Oh, but there’s such a thing as love at first sight,” protested the Baxter girl, and Anita dealt with her in swift parenthesis— “I was there when they first met. Shouldn’t I have realized——?” And then, continuing—“Well, reckon up my points. To begin with—the difference in her that we all noticed, the restlessness, the—unhappiness one might almost say, the aloofness—oh, don’t you know what I mean? as if she didn’t belong to us any more.”