“Don’t try,” said Lotty, smiling. “But I must, because I love you.” “Dear Rose,” said Lotty, swiftly bending down and kissing her. “You’re so quick,” said Rose. “I can’t follow your developments. I can’t keep touch. It was what happened with Freder—” She broke off and looked frightened. “The whole idea of our coming here,” she went on again, as Lotty didn’t seem to have noticed, “was to get away, wasn’t it? Well, we’ve got away. And now, after only a single day of it, you want to write to the very people—” She stopped. “The very people we were getting away from,” finished Lotty. “It’s quite true. It seems idiotically illogical. But I’m so happy, I’m so well, I feel so fearfully wholesome. This place—why, it makes me feel _flooded_ with love.” And she stared down at Rose in a kind of radiant surprise. Rose was silent a moment. Then she said, “And do you think it will have the same effect on Mr. Wilkins?” Lotty laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “But even if it doesn’t, there’s enough love about to flood fifty Mr. Wilkinses, as you call him. The great thing is to have lots of love _about_. I don’t see,” she went on, “at least I don’t see here, though I did at home, that it matters who loves as long as somebody does. I was a stingy beast at home, and used to measure and count. I had a queer obsession about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance. It’s only love that’s any good. At home I wouldn’t love Mellersh unless he loved me back, exactly as much, absolute fairness. Did you ever. And as he didn’t, neither did I, and the _aridity_ of that house! The _aridity_ . . .” Rose said nothing. She was bewildered by Lotty. One odd effect of San Salvatore on her rapidly developing friend was her sudden free use of robust words. She had not used them in Hampstead. Beast and dog were more robust than Hampstead cared about. In words, too, Lotty had come unchained. But how she wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write to her husband and say “Come.” The Wilkins _ménage_, however pompous Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a healthier, more natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to Mellersh and would get an answer. She couldn’t write to Frederick, for only too well did she know he wouldn’t answer. At least, he might answer—a hurried scribble, showing how much bored he was at doing it, with perfunctory thanks for her letter. But that would be worse than no answer at all; for his handwriting, her name on an envelope addressed by him, stabbed her heart. Too acutely did it bring back the letters of their beginnings together, the letters from him so desolate with separation, so aching with love and longing. To see apparently one of these very same letters arrive, and open it and find: