Several sheets of foolscap paper covered with large open handwriting lay upon the table. Upon the first page, with a line ruled beneath it, stood the title: 'The Diary of a Plain Girl--Notes and Sensations.' She had just laid aside her pen and was waiting for Cecilia. 'Oh, Alice darling, how are you? I am delighted--I am so delighted to see you. Let me kiss you, let me see you; I have been longing for you for weeks--for months.' Alice bent her face down, and then, holding each other's hands, the girls stood looking through a deep and expressive silence into each other's eyes. 'I wish, Alice, I could tell you how glad I am to have you back: it seems like heaven to see you again. You look so nice, so true, so sweet, so perfect. There never was anyone so perfect as you, Alice.' 'Cecilia dear, you shouldn't talk to me like that; it is absurd. Indeed, I don't think it is quite right.' 'Not quite right,' replied the cripple sadly; 'what do you mean? Why is it wrong--why should it be wrong for me to love you?' 'I don't mean to say that it is wrong; you misunderstand me; but--but--well, I don't know how to explain myself, but--' 'I know, I know, I know,' said Cecilia, and her nervous sensitivity revealed thoughts in Alice's mind--thoughts of which Alice herself was not distinctly conscious, just as a photograph exposes irregularities in the texture of a leaf that the naked eye would not perceive. 'If Harding were to speak to you so, you wouldn't think it wrong.' Alice's face flushed a little, and she said, with a certain resoluteness in her voice, 'Cecilia, I wish you wouldn't talk to me in this way. You give me great pain.' 'I am sorry if I do, but I can't help it. I am jealous of the words that are spoken to you, of the air you breathe, of the ground you walk upon. How, then, can I help hating that man?' 'I do not wish to argue this point with you, Cecilia, nor am I sure that I understand it. There is no one I like better than you, dear, but that we should be jealous of each other is absurd.' 'For you perhaps, but not for me.' Cecilia looked at Alice reproachfully, and at the end of a long and morose silence she said: 'You received the long letter I wrote to you about him?' 'Yes, Cecilia, and I answered it. It seems to me very foolish to pronounce condemnatory opinion on the whole world; and particularly for you who have seen so little of it.' 'That doesn't matter. People are blinded by their passions; but when these have worn themselves out, they see the truth in all its horrible nakedness. One of these days you'll tell me that I am right. You have been a good deal in the world lately; tell me if you have found it beautiful. You didn't believe me when I told you that men were vile and abominable; you said there were good men in the world, that you were sure of it. Have you found them? Was Mr. Harding so very perfect?' Alice coloured again; she hesitated, and in the silence Cecilia again divined her friend's thoughts.