Reggie was a friend, and a friend only he must remain, and to this end the regular correspondence which he and she had kept up since Reggie left school, must become irregular and fitful. If only he would take his summer holiday in the school holidays, Gertrude thought she could manage somehow to be away when he was at home, and that would break the continuity of other summer holidays when they two had spent much time together, cycling and playing tennis. It was a pity for the boy to set his heart on what could not be. Reggie ought to look out for a girl with money, or at any rate for a girl who--who--liked being poor. The result of these cogitations was that many a time when Reggie confidently looked for a letter, none came, and when the dulness of a week's work did happen to be enlivened by one of Gertrude's epistles, somehow the letters were short and unsatisfactory and spoke only of the most casual on-the-top-of-things topics. Reggie wondered over it in silence. He hated writing scolding letters, and like Tom Green, he felt that no amount of talking or writing could bring love, and at first he only felt the miss of the regular correspondence, without seeking for a reason other than the excuse that Gertrude must be extra busy at school, or that she had fresh duties laid upon her since Denys's engagement, of which he had heard a full account before Gertrude had thought of reducing her correspondence. He little dreamed that Gertrude herself missed the writing of those old confidential letters far more than she had expected. She had always saved up all the little experiences and jokes of school and home to tell Reggie, and now it was very dull to be always pulling herself up to remember to make her letters short and few and casual. But when Easter Monday and his birthday arrived together, without bringing any birthday remembrance other than a letter from his old chum, Charlie Henchman, Reggie's heart went down to a depth for which he had no idea there was room in his mechanism. He had come down to breakfast in his dull little parlour, confidently expecting to see Gertrude's handwriting on his table, and it was not there. He sat down mechanically and looked round the dull little room, and the dulness of it, the dinginess, the unhomelikeness of it struck on his heart as it had never done before. The small horsehair sofa where he sometimes tried to find a resting-place and failed; the tiny chiffonnier, unenlightened by a looking-glass or any ornament save a vase, which had been one of Gertrude's childish birthday presents to him, and which he always kept filled with flowers and called them Gertrude's flowers; the uncomfortable horsehair arm-chair and the bare breakfast table with its coarse cloth and clumsy china, had all been bearable while he looked forward to a dainty and pretty, though tiny, home with Gertrude.