Fritz--his animal passion for her--his horror of her now--Miss Schley--their petty, concealed strife--Rupert Carey’s love--Leo Ulford’s desire of conquest--his father’s strange, pathetic devotion--Winter falling at the feet of Spring--figures and events from the panorama of her life now ended flickered through her almost numbed mind, while the tears still ran down her face. And Robin Pierce? As she thought of him more life quickened in her mind. Since her accident he had written to her several times, ardent, tender letters, recalling all he had said to her, recounting again his adoration of her for her nature, her soul, the essence of her, the woman in her, telling her that this terror which had come upon her only made her dearer to him, that--as she knew--he had impiously dared almost to long for it, as for an order of release that would take effect in the liberation of her true self. These letters she had read, but they had not stirred her. She had told herself that Robin did not know, that he was a self-deceiver, that he did not understand his own nature, which was allied to the nature of every living man. But now, seeking some, even the smallest solace in the intense agony of desolation that was upon her, she caught--in her bleeding woman’s heart--at this hand stretched out from Rome. She got up, went to her bedroom, unlocked her despatch-box, took out these letters of Robin’s. They had not stirred her, yet she had kept them. Now she came down once more to the piazza, sat by the tea-table, opened them, read them, re-read them, whispered them over again and again. Something she must have; some hand she must catch at. She could not die in this freezing cold which she had never known, this cold that came out of the Inferno, at whose cavern mouth she stood. And Robin said he was there--Robin said he was there. She did not love Robin. It seemed to her now that it would be grotesque for her to love any man. Her face was not meant for love. But as she read these ardent, romantic letters, written since the tragedy that had overtaken her, she began to ask herself, with a fierce anxiety, whether what Robin affirmed could be the truth? Was he unlike other men? Was his nature capable of a devotion of the soul to another soul, of a devotion to which any physical ugliness, even any physical horror, would count as nothing?