I have given up my old comfortable quarters in the----and have taken a couple of cheap rooms here at----. For some months I shall not be writing for money and I wished not to eat unnecessarily into my small savings. One room is a mere closet where I sleep, the other is pretty large, but still crowded immoderately with my books. I am hard at work on a book I have had in mind for several years,--the history and significance of humanitarianism. I need not tell you what the gist of that _magnum opus_ is to be, and, dear sceptic, trust me it will be put into such a form as to stir up a pother whether with or without ultimate results. I have learned enough from the despised trade of journalism to manage that. When I return from Morningtown I shall give myself up utterly to composition. Two or three months ought to suffice for the work, for the material is already well in hand; and at the end of that time my pen shall turn to making money again. I have no anxiety about gaining a modest income--and can you imagine what that means to you and me? I had thought to send our goblin boy into the country as you bade me, but for a while I am keeping him here. He sleeps in a cot beside me, and in the day, when not at school or crouching in sphinxlike silence on the curbstone, he sits in a great chair by the window. Often when I look up from my book his eyes are fixed on me with a kind of mute appealing wonder. Somehow I could not let him go. He seems a link between us in our separation; and while my thoughts are set upon rebuking the errors of humanitarianism it will be well to have this object of human pity before my eyes. I wonder if you comprehend what a strange wistful letter you have written. You are no longer merely the maid I knew, and my ways of thought excite in you a terror of loneliness that sharpens into resentment--so you say. Once more, dear girl, we will talk of all this when I come. Until that happy day, wait, and fortify your love with trust. XXXIV JESSICA TO PHILIP I have a number of terms, my Philip, with which I might begin this letter, but I have not yet the courage to call you by such dear names beyond the whispering gallery of my own heart.