There were a score of letters in all, gay with green and red stamps: some from already forgotten beaus, others from girl friends; a long annual letter from her aunt and uncle, distilling the heavy quiet and enforced lethargy of the small town; a note from Peavey; sentimental scrawls from the various props; a line in Sassoon's brief peremptory style, saying that he would call that afternoon--an announcement suggestive of presents to appear; a missive from Massingale, which she reserved for the last; several envelopes in unfamiliar hands which puzzled her--in fact, odds and ends of all the curious threads that had woven into her life. She arranged them in order, the old memories first to be read and forgot the quicker, the outer cohorts of admirers, the initiated, and for the last Massingale and a letter or two that she had not peeped into, in deference to her love of the mysterious. She began with the news from home, her body stiffening as her mind set itself to resistance. It was ten pages long, closely and painfully written out in the familiar faded and trembling hand: news of the weather and of the year's building, a record of illnesses and deaths, who had married and who had moved--the tabulated inconsequentialities of village life; and through all the complaining note of solitude and longing which always left her uneasy before the querulous pleading note of duty. She finished rapidly, and drew a long breath. The next was from her old admirer, the grocer's clerk, now full partner, faithfully announcing his marriage. She stopped a moment at the name of the woman. "Bedelia--Bedelia Stone? Funny I can't remember. Oh, of course! Delia--the girl with red hair and freckles who hated me so. Curious, I'd almost forgot!" She went on to the next, shaking off the heaviness of spirit which these returning memories always laid across her ascending imagination. Then came Christmas remembrances from other outstripped chance devotees--one from a young dramatic critic in Buffalo whom she had enlisted in that short stop. She smiled at this fidelity, rather flattered. Peavey's letter, announcing a delay in his return, and the forwarding of a present, was signed, "Your devoted and faithful friend." This departure from formality left her in a reverie; she foresaw complications ahead, a new difficulty in the intimacy of the coming explanation which would require all her tact to prevent an open declaration.