"Molly has asked me to Witch-Hollow for a quiet week in June, and I'm going. She would ask you if I suggested it. Shall I? Because, since we last met, once or twice the thought has occurred to me that perhaps an explanation was overdue. Not that I should make any to you if you and I meet at Witch-Hollow. There isn't any to make--except by my saying that I hope to see you again. Will you be content with that admission of guilt? "I meant to speak to you again that day at the Charity affair, only there were so many people bothering--and you seemed to be so delightfully preoccupied with that pretty Cyrille Caldera. I really had no decent opportunity to speak to you again without making her my mortal enemy--and you, too, perhaps. "May I dare to be a little friendly now and say that I would like to see you? Somehow I feel that even still I may venture to talk to you on a different plane and footing from any which exists between other men and me. You were once so friendly, so kind, so nice to me. You have been nice--_always_. And if I seem to have acquired any of the hardness, any of the cynical veneer, any of the fashionable scepticism and unbelief which, perhaps, no woman entirely escapes in my environment, it all softens and relaxes and fades and seems to slip away as soon as I begin to talk to you--even on this note-paper. Which is only one way of saying, 'Please be my friend again!' "I sometimes hear about you from others. I am impressively informed that you have given up all frivolous social activity and are now most industriously devoting yourself to your real-estate business. And I am wondering whether this rather bewildering _volte-face_ is to be permanent. "Because I see no reason for anybody going to extremes. Between the hermit's cell and the Palace of Delights there is a quiet and happy country. Don't you know that? "Would you care to write to me and tell me a little about yourself? Do you think it odd or capricious of me to write to you? And are you perhaps irritated because of my manners which must have seemed to you discourteous--perhaps rude? "I know of course that you called on me; that you telephoned; that you wrote to me; and that I made no response. "And I am going to make no explanation. Can your friendship, or what may remain of it, stand the strain? "If it can, please write to me. And forgive me whatever injustice I have seemed to do you. I ask it because, although you may not believe it, my regard for you has never become less since the night that a Harlequin and a golden dancer met in the noisy halls of old King Carnival.... Only, the girl who writes you this was younger and happier then than I think she ever will be again. "Your friend--if you wish--