"If it comes to that," he said, "you look far from well yourself, Alice." And she turned her pretty, prim face up to him with a sudden trembling of the lips.

"What do you expect," she asked, quite simply, "when I've only had one short letter from you all the time I've been away." "I never write letters," he said.

"You know that.

How's your mother ?" "But I wrote every day, and if you read them you'd know." He shifted one shoulder.

These gentle creatures could be horribly disconcerting and direct.