But when she had finished she pushed it all aside and dropped her face on her arm and her whole body trembled with a long, deep sob. Her heart was answering the call of his, which she had heard and refused to heed, through every line of his letters. They were so far apart, their faces were set toward such hostile ideals! And yet across that deep gulf their spirits clamored and their bodies yearned for presence, for companionship, each for its mate. Through a blur of tears she took up her pen and groped for a fresh sheet of paper. “Oh, Jeff, Jeff,” her pen was flying across the page, “how will it be possible to endure this separation longer? Surely it is wrong for people who love as we do to tear themselves apart like this. I cannot endure it, and yet I cannot consent. Come then, and carry me away in spite of myself.” Ah, it was a relief to give way to her feelings, to write the things she longed to say, even though she did not intend that he should ever read them. The pain in her face, the drawn look of mental suffering, began to fade out of it. “Tie my feet and my arms, if you must, so that I cannot run from you. Stop my lips with kisses, so that I cannot say I will not go. Take me in your arms and carry me away, anywhere, but do not let me deny our love any longer.” It was the cry of the primitive woman, whose sane instinct for the strong mate lives on through all the thousand and one denials and perversions of civilization. From the days when courtship was seizure, and first choice belonged to the strongest, has the wish to be won in spite of herself lived on in the heart of woman. It has been buried deep and ever deeper beneath the accruing refinements of humanity, and forced to find dwarfed expression in the subterfuges with which the civilized woman evades and refuses her wooer, that finally she may make pretense of her unwilling capture. But now, from beneath the depths of a million years, it rose suddenly to the surface of a strong woman’s heart and overpowered all her strength. Her hand was shaking and her bosom heaving as she put the sheet to one side. There was a knock at the door and Charlotte’s voice called out: “Rhoda! Please let me have some of your paper. I’ve used mine all up.” Opening her door a mere crack she handed out paper and envelopes, for she had no wish to give her sister’s inquiring mind a chance to speculate upon the reason for her agitated countenance. But it was only a moment more, with a little resolute drawing in of her breath and a pressure of her lips, and a minute or two before the mirror, until her composure was restored. Then she heard her mother in the hall: “Come, Rhoda! Come, Charlotte! Dinner’s ready!”