People began to talk, of course--I was Vincent Rendle’s Mrs. Anerton; when the _Sonnets to Silvia_ appeared, it was whispered that I was Silvia. Wherever he went, I was invited; people made up to me in the hope of getting to know him; when I was in London my doorbell never stopped ringing. Elderly peeresses, aspiring hostesses, love-sick girls and struggling authors overwhelmed me with their assiduities. I hugged my success, for I knew what it meant--they thought that Rendle was in love with me! Do you know, at times, they almost made me think so too? Oh, there was no phase of folly I didn’t go through. You can’t imagine the excuses a woman will invent for a man’s not telling her that he loves her--pitiable arguments that she would see through at a glance if any other woman used them! But all the while, deep down, I knew he had never cared. I should have known it if he had made love to me every day of his life. I could never guess whether he knew what people said about us--he listened so little to what people said; and cared still less, when he heard. He was always quite honest and straightforward with me; he treated me as one man treats another; and yet at times I felt he _must_ see that with me it was different. If he did see, he made no sign. Perhaps he never noticed--I am sure he never meant to be cruel. He had never made love to me; it was no fault of his if I wanted more than he could give me. The _Sonnets to Silvia_, you say? But what are they? A cosmic philosophy, not a love-poem; addressed to Woman, not to a woman! But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I’ll make a clean breast of it. You have noticed the breaks in the letters here and there, just as they seem to be on the point of growing a little--warmer? The critics, you may remember, praised the editor for his commendable delicacy and good taste (so rare in these days!) in omitting from the correspondence all personal allusions, all those _détails intimes_ which should be kept sacred from the public gaze. They referred, of course, to the asterisks in the letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself prepared for publication; that is to say, I copied them out for the editor, and every now and then I put in a line of asterisks to make it appear that something had been left out. You understand? The asterisks were a sham--_there was nothing to leave out_.