_Julia_ give him a reason! Julia setting herself up as understanding politics! To be sure, she was two years older than Val, and was always seeing her father's political friends; but that didn't account for.... It came over her how little one woman knows the side another woman turns to men. It must be immensely flattering to have a "politician" writing to her on terms of equality. Oh yes, Julia must be enormously uplifted. Val was sure of it by the heaviness that weighed _her_ down. Julia, no doubt, had "studied up" in order to share Ethan's interests on a side that Val and other girls couldn't reach. As she came out of her hiding-place she was concocting in her mind a letter which the servant should carry over to Julia with the confiscated correspondence. Her excitement had died down, leaving for the moment a dead weight of wretchedness. Ethan's letters to her had seemed before so full and satisfactory, even her hungry curiosity had felt no want in them that a letter could supply. For even the love he did not put into words seemed not only implicit in every line of each "enclosure," but more subtly delicious being veiled. His letters had filled up the empty spaces in her life, seeming to carry her along step by step through his. But if there was all this besides which he cared to write to Julia, what more might there not be in a life so full and varied as his? How had she been so blind, so easily content? It was years since they had said good-bye. Wasn't nearly every novel in the world a warning against believing that men remembered long the girl who was out of sight? No doubt, what she had dimly feared had happened at Long Branch last summer--Julia had improved the shining hour. Val went wearily down the long hall, feeling that all the zest had gone out of existence forever. She stopped to lean against the last window at the head of the back-stairs. Looking out, she saw to her surprise that Julia was sitting on the terrace under the crooked catalpa-tree. Ah, she couldn't go and leave that precious letter behind! Val went down to her with angry-beating heart. The other girl, leaning back against the tree, watched with sullen eyes the slow approach. She had wrapped the torn fichu up close about her throat. Something in Julia's handsome impassivity stirred the other to a rage, more becoming had she not been the arch offender. She dropped the crumpled envelope into Julia's lap. "I congratulate you on being able to hold up your end of such a weighty correspondence." "Is that all you have to say after leaping at me like a wild-cat and taking what didn't belong to you?" "Oh, you're waiting here for me to apologize?" Julia got up slowly. "I never thought _you_ would do such a dishonorable thing!" "It wasn't dishonorable. You and I were '_best_ friends.' I had just given you my whole confidence. You owed it to me to be as frank with me. I took what belonged to me."