"I think I should not have played as I did, an hour ago," she wrote. "It stirs me too greatly and I am afraid it makes me inclined to self-pity afterward, and I must never let myself feel _that_! If I once begin to feel sorry for myself. . . . But I _will_ not! No. You are here in the world. You exist. You _are_! That is the great thing to know and it must be enough for me. It is. I played to You. I played _just love_ to you--all the yearning tenderness--all the supreme kindness I want to give you. Isn't love really just glorified kindness? No, there is something more. . . . I feel it, though I do not know how to say it. But it was in my playing--I played it and played it. Suddenly I felt that in my playing I had shouted it from the housetops, that I had told the secret to all the world and _everybody_ knew. I stopped, and for a moment it seemed to me that I was dying of shame. But no one understood. No one had even listened. . . . Sometimes it seems to me that I am like Cora, that I am very deeply her sister in some things. My heart goes all to You--my revelation of it, my release of it, my outlet of it is all here in these pages (except when I play as I did to-day and as I shall not play again) and perhaps the writing keeps me quiet. Cora scatters her own releasings: she is looking for the You she may never find; and perhaps the penalty for scattering is never finding. Sometimes I think the seeking has reacted and that now she seeks only what will make her feel. I hope she has not found it: I am afraid of this new man--not only for your sake, dear. I felt repelled by his glance at me the first time I saw him. I did not like it--I cannot say just why, unless that it seemed too intimate. I am afraid of him for her, which is a queer sort of feeling because she has alw----" Laura's writing stopped there, for that day, interrupted by a hurried rapping upon the door and her mother's voice calling her with stress and urgency. The opening of the door revealed Mrs. Madison in a state of anxious perturbation, and admitted the sound of loud weeping and agitated voices from below. "Please go down," implored the mother. "You can do more with her than I can. She and your father have been having a terrible scene since Richard went home." Laura hurried down to the library. CHAPTER ELEVEN